Main Lecture Theatre School of Geography and the Environment
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks – attend in person or join online – all welcome
Abstract
Landscapes are not static but changing. However, these changes may be on time-scales greater than that of the average research grant, of a researcher’s life span, even of an institution’s existence. We often need to put observations we make now into their longer-term perspective, if we are to understand their causes and hence, make projections into the future. Wytham Woods is famous for some of its long-term studies both of the animals and the plants. Keith will use examples from these studies to show why conclusions from what we see now may need to be re-thought when viewed over a longer period.
Biography
Raised in rural Essex, I decided to be a forester; not really knowing what one was. My degree was in Agricultural and Forest Sciences (Oxford); becoming more interested in ecology than economics, a D.Phil studying brambles in Wytham Woods followed. My first permanent job in 1979 was as ‘apprentice’ to George Peterken, the woodland conservation guru, in the Nature Conservancy Council (government conservation agency). With NCC, through to Natural England in 2012, I was involved with the development of the Ancient Woodland Inventory and 1985 Broadleaves Policy, the woodland section of the Habitats Directive and Biodiversity Action Plans, various government reviews of forest policy, and the emergence of ‘rewilding’. plus a lot of individual site management advice. For the last 12 yrs I have returned to research on long-term vegetation change In Wytham Wood. I had ‘inherited’ the permanent plot records from my supervisor Colyear Dawkins in the 1980s and have tried to re-record them every 5-10 years. Throughout my career I have tried to break down perceptions of binary splits between foresters and environment, production vs conservation. We cannot afford them.
