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Increasing consideration is being given as to whether and how the subsoil can be utilised as a resource to store greater quantities of organic carbon through a range of 'frontier' technologies. However, recent work suggests 'priming' effects may occur when fresh soil organic carbon (SOC) is mixed with older organic carbon (OC). Combined with increasing intensity of land use and perturbation of the surface environment there is potential for buried organic carbon (OC) to be re-incorporated into the active global C cycle. Therefore, understanding the nature of existing buried organic carbon (OC) within Soil Parent Material (SPM) and landscapes is increasingly important. A major OC burial route within landscapes is via erosion and deposition processes. This paper aims to provide a 'first order' overview of the role erosion processes have made since the UK Last Glacial Maximum (UK-LGM) in the burial of OC in Great Britain. Using collated information, Monte-Carlo simulations were used to produce 'first-order' estimates of the mass of OC buried within three deposit types; Devensian Till, Devensian Glacio-fluvial deposits and Holocene Alluvium. Combined median estimates for these three deposit types alone suggest, that 385 MT of OC has been buried in these deposits across Great Britain, demonstrating the importance of post UK-LGM erosion processes in long-term sequestration of OC. The paper provides a basis of a framework to describe where buried OC may be found within UK SPM and landscapes, whilst identifying gaps in our knowledge base. Whilst focusing on Great Britain, the processes are relevant to many countries, each of which will have experienced erosion processes unique to their own history of geology, geomorphology and climate. • Post UK-LGM erosion processes are assessed in relation to organic carbon burial. • The climate-vegetation-erosion concept was used to assess erosion processes. • Climate helped determine deposit thickness and carbon concentration. • Estimates of organic carbon burial in selected deposit types were 385 Mt C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species reintroductions are a core component of conservation but require critical assessment of past baselines. The Dalmatian Pelican Pelecanus crispus formerly occurred in Britain during the Holocene and there is interest in its possible reintroduction, but its regional extinction dynamics remain poorly understood. Pelican bones are known from subfossil and zooarchaeological contexts at 11 British Holocene sites in three regions (East Anglian Fens, Somerset Levels and Moors, Humber Valley). Dalmatian Pelican is positively identified from four of these sites, with other specimens only identified to genus level. Pelican populations were probably only present periodically in Britain during intervals of suitable climate and available habitat: there is little evidence for pelicans before the Bronze Age, and most sites are known or inferred to be Iron Age. There is a suggested Medieval specimen but no secure evidence of pelican presence after the Roman period. However, no specimens are directly dated, with age estimation reliant upon indirect dates or inference. Climatic niche modelling indicates that southern Britain was the northwestern limit of pelican climate tolerance under postglacial conditions, and pelicans may have been unable to persist regionally until the mid‐ or late Holocene. Considerable pelican breeding and foraging habitat might have existed until the Medieval period, but availability of suitable habitat fluctuated throughout the Holocene. Probabilistic analysis suggests possible mean extinction date estimates between ad 589 and ad 1587, highlighting uncertainty associated with indirect data, and hindering our ability to correlate pelican disappearance with putative extinction drivers (overexploitation, human modification of wetlands, or non‐anthropogenic environmental changes). Improving our understanding of conditions associated with past pelican occurrence is essential for potential reintroduction decision‐making, and direct dating of bones from all sites is needed to establish a secure chronological framework for correlating pelican presence and disappearance with regional landscape change. This review provides a robust framework for how to integrate past environmental baselines into conservation decision‐making and reintroduction feasibility assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Isle of Man is a large island which lies in the middle of the northern Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland and, because of its insularity and size, has an impoverished flora compared with the two main islands. This has been the case throughout the postglacial and warrants the island's description as a separate phytogeographic province. We have considered Holocene tree pollen data from seventeen sites on the island which together preserve a vegetation history that spans the six thousand years of the early and mid-postglacial from the end of the Lateglacial at 11,700 cal. BP to the mid-Holocene Ulmus decline at ca. 5800 cal. BP. Radiocarbon dating of the rational limits of the pollen curves for the main tree taxa has allowed an appraisal of the timing of each one's expansion to become a significant component of the island's woodland, and comparison with the dates of their expansion on the adjacent regions of Britain and Ireland. The radiocarbon dates show that, although some variability exists probably due to local factors, there is considerable concordance between the timings of major pollen zone boundaries in Britain and Ireland around the northern Irish Sea. On the Isle of Man the expansions of both Juniperus and Betula were delayed by several centuries compared to the British/Irish data, however the timing of the expansions of Corylus, Ulmus, Quercus, Pinus and Alnus on the Isle of Man all appear closely comparable to the ages for these pollen stratigraphic events in north Wales, northwest England, southwest Scotland and eastern Ireland, as are those for the Ulmus decline. It is likely that local pedological and edaphic factors on the island account for the differences in the first Holocene millennium, while regional climatic factors governed the timings for the rest of the expansions of tree taxa across the wider region, including the Isle of Man. Disturbance, including by human agency, was important at the site scale and perhaps triggered early tree expansion in some places, including Quercus, Ulmus and Alnus. Insularity seems not to have been a significant factor in the expansion of the major forest trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]