Hedgerows at the first ever International Association for Landscape Ecology-North America Conference

This week the International Association for Landscape Ecology-North America (IALE_NA) is holding its first ever Annual Conference. I was originally a member of the UK branch of IALE and joined the North American chapter when it was formed last year from what was IALE-US.

The conference was to be held in Toronto, and I was looking forward to it being on my doorstep, but because of the lockdown it has become a virtual, on-line meeting with Plenary and Symposiums hosted live on the Zoom platform and a neat virtual Conference space hosted on Zoho. Although I was originally scheduled to give a talk on my paper, the organisers decided that Track speakers would instead produce an Iposter and allot times to stand by their posters ready for ‘chat’ with interested attendees, much as you would if you had a poster at a live confernce.

I’m presenting the provisional findings of some analysis i have undertaken on the body of literature about hedgerows in North America (81 papers and publications so far). I’m also showcasing the projects I have been working on at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience- the Hedgelaying In the Ontario Landscape Project and Ontario Rural Skills Network; and also the collaboration with US partners and Hedgelink colleague Nigel Adams on the North American Hedgerow Society.

My research is focusing on sense of place, place attachment and livelihoods using hedgerows, hedgelaying and other rural skills as a model for exploration. this Autumn I’ll be starting my PhD at Waterloo focusing on these themes.

You can view my poster by clicking on the image above. You can also here go directly to the video embedded in the poster which is on my Hedgerows You-tube channel

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