Project Background

The Ross of Mull	Tireragan beach	Tireragan bog	Tireragan coast	Tireragan bog again!	Hazel woodland	Tireragan woodland
Click on an image to see a larger version Other images are available at the end of this page

Highland Renewal (http://www.highlandrenewal.org/) is a registered charity that manages Tireragan, a small estate on the south west tip of the island of Mull. Tireragan is an important and perhaps unique area in terms of conservation importance. We already know a great deal about the site. For example, the Tireragan estate vegetation was comprehensively mapped (NVC) and surveyed by Averis and Averis in 1994 and 1999. They found remnants of the original native deciduous woodlands and identified several features of particular note.

• More scrubby, wind-pruned woodland than anywhere else in Scotland.
• Rich and varied woodland vegetation, on variable soils, that has not been severely disturbed.
• A woodland flora that shows that the microclimate below the trees is much more sheltered than that of the surrounding exposed heaths and bogs.
• Some nationally or regionally uncommon plant species. The woodlands and sheltered gullies are particularly important for uncommon plant species.
• Good representation of oceanic plant species (13 oceanic vascular plant species and 27 oceanic bryophyte species).
• Good representation of the nationally uncommon, pollution-sensitive Lobarion lichen assemblage in the woodlands.
• Abundant tree and shrub regeneration in the heaths, especially of downy birch and eared willow. This regeneration was already developing before the area was deer-fenced. Since the deer-fence was completed in 1996 it has progressed a good deal, just as was expected.
• Patches of dry heath dominated by heather and bearberry. Such heaths are scarce in the western Highlands and have been found only in a few very exposed places.

These hyper-oceanic fragments of birch, hazel and oak woodland are possibly 'very ancient' with tremendous botancical diversity. Indeed they both rare and important at an international scale, possibly representing some of the most important woodland in the UK (Black et al (2006) Forest habitat networks in the Argyll islands).

The current aim of Highland Renewal is to manage the land so that an invaluable ecosystem can be regenerated. The directors of Highland Renewal also wish to use the land as a resource for education, interpretation and enjoyment. Dr Paul Haworth (project partner) is the chairman of Highland Renewal and an honorary research fellow at MMU. Dr Alan Fielding (project leader) is a director of Highland Renewal. MMU have been using Tireragan as the basis for a Masters field trip (MSc Conservation Biology, Animal Behaviour) for almost 10 years and we are very familiar with all aspects of its biology and ecology. We already have some small datasets obtained from projects undertaken by masters students. MMU has also contributed to the development of the estate management plan (available from http://www.highlandrenewal.org/). Information from the proposed experiment will contribute to the planned reviews of the management plan in 2004 and 2010. In addition, contributions towards the management plan, from students using this site, will be welcomed.

Students will have full access to the data, and if they can visit the island, the experimental sites. The estate is open to the public at all times. Consequently we are confident that this project will make a significant contribution towards the development of skills highlighted in section 1.

Access to all aspects of the field experiment has potential benefits for many bioscience students. These benefits include:

• High degree of realism, far more so than in a greenhouse or laboratory.
• Development of identification skills using keys and digital images of specimens. It may even be possible to arrange for actual specimens to be sent to students.
• Students can learn a variety of data collection and analysis procedures, including techniques such as distance sampling and pitfall trapping.
• Scope for GIS studies using data provided by this project and images available from the ESDI (Earth Science Data Interface) site currently has free Landsat TM images (Row 206 Path 21) for the 13th May 1994 and 25th May 2000).
• Important ecological concepts can be illustrated using real data.
• An opportunity to analyze real data in meaningful ways.
• An increasingly large and valuable data set that will grow as the experiment progresses enabling the illustration of concepts that operate only over the long time scales.
• Multi-level access (A-level, undergraduate and post-graduate) to the same experiment using exercises that are designed for each academic level.

Some relevant literature

The following list is not intended to be comprehensive. Other important articles are identified in context.

1. Coppins, A., Coppins, B. and Quelch, P. 2002. Atlantic hazelwoods: some observations on the ecology of this neglected habitat from a lichenological perspective. British Wildlife October, 17-26.
2. Hæggström, C.-A. 2000. The age and size of Hazel (Corylus avellana L.) stools of Nåtö Island, Åland Islands, SW Finland. pp 47-57 in Agnoletti, M. and Anderson, S. (eds), Methods and approaches in forest history. CAB International, Wallingford.

General views from known locations

The following links are images from known locations. They should give a good indication of some of the habitats and terrain within Tireragan.

• Wide panorama (overlooking the W-E valley from Bàgh Tir Chille to Tir Fhearagain).
• Separare overlapping panoramic photographs (image 6 is a photograph from above the main experimental plot). 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.