Irish Geography

Managing Ireland’s Upland Fire Risk: Geographic Perspectives on Agricultural Policy and Landscape Change

2025-06-16T07:45:11+00:00

This paper explores the intersection of agricultural policy, land management, and wildfire risk in Ireland's upland regions, with a particular focus on the unintended consequences of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Specifically, I investigate the shift towards extensification under recent CAP reforms, which has led to a decline in livestock numbers and subsequent undergrazing in parts of the Irish uplands. While these changes may have contributed to improvements to lands overgrazed by sheep in parts of the country, they may have also facilitated the encroachment of scrub vegetation, which can disrupt native habitats and heighten wildfire risk. I examine how CAP's Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) payments may incentivise field burning to maintain grazable land, thus exacerbating fire hazards in sensitive upland ecosystems. I further consider the role of rural depopulation and an ageing farming population in diminishing active land management, complicating fire risk mitigation efforts. This paper advocates for the development of integrated policies that balance agricultural productivity with ecological and fire risk considerations, proposing more adaptive policy frameworks that address both the socio-economic and ecological dynamics of upland farming.

An all-island landslide database for Ireland

2025-10-01T07:54:01+00:00

National landslide inventories are essential for effective landslide management and adaptation to climate change. The Island of Ireland has two separate inventories compiled by two different government agencies. We present the methodology for the construction of the first all-island landslide database (Cullen and Bourke, 2023). We use the two previously assembled jurisdictional databases supplemented with our own data.

The new all-Ireland landslide inventory contains a total of 3098 landslides, including 134 previously unreported landslides. In addition, we supplemented the records with weather conditions for an additional 86 landslides. The all-Ireland landslide database contains the earliest written landslide record documented globally. There is the potential to extend and enhance the inventory through further exploitation of historical sources. We find that the number of failures listed in coastal locations are significantly under-reported.

A preliminary analysis of the database indicates that most slope failures in Ireland occur in peat (45%) and 95% of those are associated with wet conditions. This is significant given the predicted changes in climate.

Military dimensions to small- and medium-scale Irish topographic mapping during the twentieth century

2026-01-23T06:02:49+00:00

This article traces the development of military mapping in Ireland during the early and middle twentieth century. Particular attention is given to the evolution of precise systems for the identification of location, the use of maps for training and for military manoeuvres, the use of maps during the 1920-21 War of Independence, and the development of 1:20,000 scale maps for military requirements. Artillery training maps at this scale were produced for the British Army during World War 1, and the 1:20,000 scale was again explored by the Irish military during the late 1920s and in the 1930s. Features of these maps were the use of closely spaced contours, a grid system to specify locations, and partial or complete metrication of heights and distances. Proposals for a 1:20,000 scale map series made by the Irish authorities were followed by subsequent technical assessment. Several experimental and innovative map sheets were published, possibly partly as a result of military training exercises, during the 1930s. Their modern design and influence from British and French cartographic traditions has attracted attention. However, the impact of World War II curtailed the further development of the 1:20,000 series. The postwar focus was on modernising the triangulation framework, creating an appropriate Irish grid and then re-organising map scales to ‘rounded’ numbers suitable for the metric system and comparable to most other European countries. The survey organisations in both Dublin and Belfast participated in these developments, but it was in Northern Ireland that a new phase of military mapping was precipitated by the ‘Troubles’ that began in the late 1960s and which lasted some three decades. That mapping included a special 1:20,000 map series that was never formally published and, for the main urban centres, ‘religious areas’ maps together with specially adapted 1:2500 maps.

Analysis of Spatially Referenced Headers in Grassroots Football

2024-06-13T06:29:55+00:00

Spatially referenced heading locations in football are being used to support sports analytics, but also used to make decisions to reduce long-term brain injuries in players. Here, we develop a proof-of-concept to identify heading locations in amateur football in Ireland, combing video analytics, geographic information systems and science (GIS), cartography, and sports-geography to support this pressing issue. This is to our knowledge the first time such research has been undertaken on Irish sport. Video recordings from six amateur premier teams were used to gather and digitise location information on headers. These headers were classified into a typology and visualised to support spatial cognition. In total, we identified 534 headers across five games, varying in location and typology. We found that defensive headers were the most common type, accounting for over half of all recorded headers. Goal kicks and throw-ins also contributed significantly to the total number of headers. This research highlights the important positional aspect of the wings in heading, which is a novel result, while the condition of the pitch affected the styles of play of the teams involved, with wet conditions and poorly maintained playing surfaces leading to more headers. The need to deconstruct spatially referenced heading locations by typology, league, and level will be important considerations for policy makers, coaches, and players.

A Professor Ronald Hull Buchanan (1931-2025) - An appreciation

2025-06-09T23:59:24+00:00

Ronnie Buchanan was Professor of Geography at Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB) and formerly Director of its Institute of Irish Studies between 1982 and 1993. He spent most of his academic career at QUB where he gained a PhD in 1958. Following a year teaching in the USA, he joined the Department of Geography QUB as a lecturer in 1959, becoming full professor in 1982. Three distinct sets of contributions can be identified in terms of his legacy. First, in pedagogical terms, he encouraged students to analyse their subject matter and adopt a more holistic approach to the study of geography. He was committed to interdisciplinary research. Second, he contributed in many ways to the work and education of future planners as reflected in his publications which went beyond his own specialism of Irish historical geography. He had the ability to go outside the ivory tower of academia to the real world of policy and practice. Third, he actively engaged with students to gain a better understanding of their backgrounds and motivations. Future generations of geographers and planners will be rewarded by recognising the contribution he made to our understanding of the changes impacting on our urban and rural spaces.