Dr Nicholas McCarthy

Biography

Dr. Mc Carthy has worked in Teaching and Research for the last 20 years firstly with Dr. Conor O Reilly of UCD on Plant and Tree Quality where he also completed a PhD on Herbicides and their effect on seedling quality in the nursery. He then took up a permanent lecturing post on the BSc in Forestry Course at Waterford Institute of Technology, where he continued his research looking at reducing and/or alternatives to herbicides together with investigating the problems of invasive species in Irish forests. With the help of COFORD he set up The Forest Vegetation – Alternative Management Systems research group (FORVAMS) in WIT which investigated using mulches as an alternative to herbicides on afforestation and reforestation sites. He also instigated the setting up of COST Action E47 (2005-2009) entitled ‘European Network for Forest Vegetation Management: Towards environmental sustainability’ of which he was the chairperson. He recently presented keynote papers on Forest vegetation management in Europe into the 21st century at a IUFRO Biosecurity conference in New Zealand (2009) and at IUFRO Forest Vegetation Management Conference in Chile (2012).

He was the Irish representative and very active on the COST Domain Committee for Forests and forest products (FPS) and where he is currently the rapporteur for COST Actions FP1102 Determining Invasiveness and Risk Of Dothistroma (DIAROD), FP1002 Pathway Evaluation and pest Risk Management In Transport (PERMIT) and also COST DC Liaison between the Forests, their Products and Services Domain and Earth System Science and Environmental Management (ESSEM) Domain, FP 1202 Strengthening conservation for adaption of marginal populations of forest trees to climate change in Europe and has just recently been appointed rapporteur to a COST Action on the Balkan Countries and implementing modern forest management systems there.

He was instrumental in the setting up of a one year add-on BSc (Hons) in Land Management (Agriculture/Horticulture/Forestry) for which he is currently the course leader. He is a committee member of the Tree Council of Ireland.

His area of expertise is in Forest Protection with which he has/is worked very closely with both the Forest Service and Coillte in helping to solve some of the problems facing the forest industry into the future. He has worked in the past 7 years trying to publicise the problems facing Irish forests from invasive pests and diseases and is striving to investigate new ways of detecting and identifying these threats early.

He has had Postgrad students working on an early warning management tool for invasive species in Irish forestry and on Rhododendron control using bioherbicides as part of PlanForBio (Plantation Forestry Biodiversity) in collaboration with UCC and Trinity College Dublin and has currently taken on a PhD student to work on seaweed extracts and their potential for use as pesticides in Irish forests.

He also subedited a book on European forest vegetation management practices published in 2009.

He has been an external examiner on 4 PhDs and 2 Masters and an Internal examiner on 1 PhD and 2 Masters