Alison Hester


Alison Hester is an ecologist in the UK, she is Professor at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Scotland and is an expert in the effects of land management on biodiversity.

Education and career

Hester was educated at Kings College London, she then did a PhD at the University of Aberdeen and was a Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO Western Australia.
Her research looks at natural resource management and effects on biodiversity; her work has raised awareness of issues affecting woodland such as habitat fragmentation and invasive species such as bracken, and has shown that it is important to consider cultural context in land management for example the management of moorland for grouse shooting.

Books

Chapter 5 Threatened Habitats: Marginal Vegetation in Upland Areas, with Rob Brooker, in Biodiversity Under Threat, edited by R E Hester, R M Harrison, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2007.
Chapter 9 Plant traits, Browsing and Grazing Herbivores, and Vegetation Dynamics, with Christina Skarpe, in The Ecology of Browsing and Grazing, edited by Gordon, Iain J., Prins, Herbert H.T., published by Springer in 2008.

Awards and honours