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  • Parts of Scotland receive some of the highest levels of rainfall in Europe, but we also experience periods of intense drying when the danger of wild fires can be severe.
  • Wildfires cause significant damage to agricultural, forestry, biodiversity, recreational and sporting interests, and threaten infrastructure, property, and life
  • Wildfires place a significant operational and cost burden on the Fire and Rescue Service, directly in fighting wildfires, and in the requirement to redeploy resources to maintain geographic coverage
  • The aim of the project is to contribute to the development of a Fire Danger Rating System for the Scottish environment and vegetation
  • Wildfires destroy large and small with impunity
  • Wildfires destroy large and small with impunity
  • Understanding how fires become established and spread in complex vegetation is challenging
  • The project is carrying out field studies to examine fires spread in Scottish vegetation types (Andy Taylor discussing vegetation characteristics with Rory Hadden and colleagues)
  • Determining the quantities and moisture contents of different fuels are integral to modelling potential fire risks
  • Numerous weather, vegetation and soil parameters are included within the rating system model to predict the level of fire risk.

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Andy Taylor

andy.taylor@hutton.ac.uk

My major focus is on the roles of fungi in the environment, in particular mutualistic soil fungi that are essential for the healthy growth of most terrestrial plant species. My varied research topics mirror the diversity of fungi as a group and the many functional roles that they carry out in most ecosystems. A key aspect of my work is the detection and identification of fungi in environmental samples. Since even those species that produce visible structures above ground can present considerable problems for identification, a significant part of the research is focused on the development and use of molecular tools for accurate species identifications. These tools are also used to examine spatial structuring of populations and communities at both local and continental scales. I have written over 85 papers for international journals.