The Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit (PRU) is a small, active, high-achieving research group in the Department of Botany, NUI Galway. Since start-up in the early 1980s, it has been involved in researching long-term environmental change, with particular emphasis on the last 15 000 years.

It has achieved an international reputation for its research into Late-glacial, i.e. the final phase of the last glaciation; c. 15 000 to 11 500 BP (Before Present), and Holocene (post-glacial) environments in western Ireland. This has mainly involved detailed investigations of peat and lake-sediment cores. Long-term woodland dynamics, climate change and the long-term effects of human activity on natural ecosystems have received particular attention.

The main area of expertise is pollen analysis. Modern developments in this almost century-old technique, make it an exceptionally powerful method for elucidating past environments.

Many of the investigations carried out in the PRU involve close collaboration with cognate laboratories in various parts of Europe and elsewhere. This gives ’added value’ in that it introduces expertise and facilities that are scarce or non-existent in Ireland, and it also gives a global dimension to environmental matters as pertaining to Ireland and, in particular, long-term environmental change.

The PRU contributes to the research programmes of both the Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change and the Environmental Change Institute. It thus effectively bridges the gap between the Arts and the Natural Sciences. This is also reflected in its publications which appear in dedicated journals relating to both disciplines.

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility