Profile – Plants Zone

Education:

Table View High in South Africa (1998-2000), Hazelwick High School Crawley (2000-2002), Royal Holloway University of London (2008-2012)
Qualifications:

Bsc (Hons), MSc, awaiting my PhD qualification (eeek)
Work History:

Make-up artist for Clinique and MAC cosmetics oh and a number of jobs before that: pizza place, Boots…
Current Job:

Postdoctoral researcher

About Me:

Freshwater ecologist who loves coffee and my staffie rescue dog, Ninja.
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This is Ninja. We adopted him from the dog’s trust. He was previously a stray found wandering around the streets of Leeds. Now he has a home with us. He is a total Ninja! #AdoptDontShop
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Technically I am an invasion ecologist. My job is to find out where alien (non-native) plants are and how they are spreading across the UK. I also want to know how they are affecting the native plants here in Britain. Many alien plants can grow bigger and faster than our native plants which means that they are out-competed for vital resources such as space and light to grow. An example is Kudzu vine which can take over an entire forest like a blanket. We lose a lot of diversity due to alien plants and they can have severe impacts on ecosystems such as increasing flooding and changing nutrient cycles which affects the growth of native plants.
My Typical Day:

During fieldwork, I will be head high in dense plants along rivers searching for invasive alien plants, in the office I will be trying to figure out what these aliens are doing to our native plants!
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When I find a patch of Himalayan balsam it is so big that I have to crawl through to get to the other side where it isn’t growing!
What I'd do with the prize money:

Enable students from local schools to get outside and do fieldwork, to experience science first hand!

Zarah Pattison