Peter Thomas

Biography

I have been at Keele since 1986. My first degree, BSc (Hons) in Biology from Exeter University was followed by an MSc in Ecology at Aberdeen University.  After working for a year, I moved to the University of New Brunswick, Canada supported by a Commonwealth Scholarship to work for a PhD on the regeneration of trees after forest fires.  While at Keele I have spent sabbatical periods as Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada and as Bullard Fellow at Harvard University, USA.

Research and scholarship

My research interests are primarily to do with the ecology of individual trees, in particular tree growth and seed production.  One long-term project, following the seed production of beech trees across England, has been running for 30 years and now has the longest continuous dataset.  Another project is looking at the seed production and seedling establishment of Scots pine in wetland situations.  I am also involved in a project on modelling forest growth for silvicultural management.  Further afield, I am part of an international team linking the sulphur content of tree rings to that in soda straws (speleothems) from a cave in Italy, ranging from a consideration of pollution over Europe to mapping sulphur in tree rings at the sub-micron scale using the synchrotron at Grenoble. 

I also continue an interest in the effect of fire on vegetation and have two long-term projects running, one looking at the effect of grazing and fire on the world’s northern most cactus population in northern Canada (running since 1993), and the other following cohorts of cacti as they cope with desert grassland fires in Arizona (running since 1987).  I am part of the Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics (EPSAM).

Public understanding of science is also important to me and I have written a number of articles and books on tree and woodland ecology aimed at the non-specialist.

Teaching

Year 1

• LSC-10037 Diversity of Life
• ESC-10039 Fundamentals of Physical Geography
• ESC-10048 Earth Systems

Year 2

• LSC-20054 Life at the extremes
• ESC-20038 Integrated Field Studies
• ESC-20017 Human Impact of the Environment, Scientific Perspectives

Year 3

• LSC-30004 Research Project (Biology) (Supervisor)
• LSC-30007 Dissertation for Biology (Supervisor)
• LSC-30017 Trees in their Environment (Module Manager)
• ESC-30019 Applied Environmental Science Independent Research Project (Supervisor)
• CHE-30013 Forensic Specialisms

MSc

• LSC-40026 Trees, Forests & Global Change (Module Manager)