Nick Dickinson is an academic who received his Ph.D. from University of Keele in 1980, before moving to a lectureship at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and then to Liverpool John Moores University in England where he is now Reader (Associate Professor) in Environmental Biology. His research activity has been concerned with the ecological impact of contaminated soils associated with agriculture, urbanization and industry, mostly in the context of to heavy metals and in relation to trees studied in tissue culture, glasshouse trials and field experiments. He is currently five years into phytoremediation trials involving 30 ha of tree planting on 18 brownfield sites in the Mersey Forest area around Liverpool in Northwest England. These studies provide the context for this presentation.

Email address: n.m.dickinson@livjm.ac.uk