An investigation of vegetation and environmental change in the Comeragh Mountains Dr Bettina Stefanini An investigation of vegetation and environmental change in the Comeragh Mountains Prepared by Dr Bettina Stefanini 8 Middle Mountjoy Street Phibsboro Dublin 7 Phone: 087 218 0048 email:
[email protected] February 2013 2 Introduction Ireland has a dense network of over 475 palaeoecological records of Quaternary origin. However, there are few late-Holocene vegetation records from Waterford and the extant ones are truncated (Mitchell et al. 2013). Thus the county presents a blank canvas regarding prehistoric vegetation dynamics. Likewise, possible traces in the environment of its well documented 18th century mining and potential earlier mining history have not been found so far. This study was commissioned by the Metal Links project, at the Copper Coast Geopark, which is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Ireland Wales Programme 2007 - 2013 (Interreg 4A). It aims to investigate vegetation dynamics, mining history and environmental change in the Comeragh Mountains. Site description and sampling Ombrotrophic peat is the most promising medium for geochemical analysis since metal traces are thought to be immobile in this matrix (Mighall et al. 2009). Such deposits are equally well suited for microfossil analysis and for this reason the same cores were chosen for both analyses. The selection of potential study sites presented difficulties due to extensive local disturbance of peat sediments. Initial inspection of deposits on the flanks of the Comeragh Mountains revealed that past peat harvesting had removed or disturbed much of this material and thus rendered it unsuitable for analysis.