Ashby, MA and Heinemeyer, A (2020) Prescribed burning impacts on ecosystem services in the British uplands: A methodological critique of the EMBER project. Journal of Applied Ecology, 57 (11). 2112 - 2120. ISSN 0021-8901

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Abstract

Due to its novelty and scale, the EMBER project is a key study within the prescribed burning evidence base. However, it has several significant but overlooked methodological flaws.
In this paper, we outline and discuss these flaws. In doing so, we aim to highlight the current paucity of evidence relating to prescribed burning impacts on ecosystem services within the British uplands.
We show that the results of the EMBER project are currently unreliable because: it used a correlative space-for-time approach; treatments were located within geographically separate and environmentally distinct sites; environmental differences between sites and treatments were not accounted for during statistical analysis; and, peat surface temperature results are suggestive of measurement error.
Policy Implications. Given the importance of the EMBER project, our findings suggest that (a) government agencies and policymakers need to re-examine the strengths and limitations of the prescribed burning evidence base; and, (b) future work needs to control for site-specific differences so that prescribed burning impacts on ecosystem services can be reliably identified.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Applied Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.
Subjects: Q Science > Q Science (General)
Divisions: Faculty of Natural Sciences > School of Geography, Geology and the Environment
Depositing User: Symplectic
Date Deposited: 25 Apr 2023 08:01
Last Modified: 25 Apr 2023 08:01
URI: https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/12233

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