Carbon sources and sinks in recovering logged forests
Are recovering logged forests a carbon sink due to increased tree growth rates or a carbon source due to carbon losses from soil organic matter and deadwood? Our research shows that sources outweigh sinks for at least the first decade after logging.
Metabolic approach to forest ecosystem health
Do metabolic ecology approaches offer a useful new approach to assessing ecosystem health and nature recovery? Our research uses areas of old growth and selectively logged forest to assess this approach.
Active restoration of selectively logged forest
The dipterocarp trees that dominate the lowland forests of Southeast Asia have traits that mean they may be slow to naturally recover from selective-logging and other disturbances. Can active restoration techniques accelerate forest recovery? Our research uses the experimental treatments of Sabah Biodiversity Experiment to assess the effectiveness of replanting with different species and of ‘climber cutting’ – the removal of climbing liana species.
Equity of access to, and planning of, Urban Green Spaces (UGS) is an area of growing interest in a period in which urban greening is intertwined with equity issues in socially diverse urban centres. While efforts to widen communities’ spatial access to UGS and procedural representation in their planning through more inclusive place-based governance arrangements have been made, little attention has been paid to the recognitional dimension of equity, here understood as recognition of communities’ lived experience of deprivation and historic relations with institutions. This thesis takes an intra- and inter-community comparative approach between three areas of Oxford with low, mid-high and high deprivation levels, and varying types of neighbourhood or regeneration plans.
A free, drop-in family-friendly event led by researchers Martha Crockatt and Mattia Troiano, developed in collaboration with Natasha Summer, a local community champion, and in partnership with the Oxfordshire African Caribbean Multicultural Society. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Science.
Research from Wild Justice shows only 53% of on-site environmental measures legally secured through the development process are actually delivered in reality.
Read the Wild Justice Lost Nature Summary here
This report sets out an expert opinion on how Government should approach the issues of funding and financing nature recovery in England.
The research takes as its starting point the essential importance of nature recovery and the headwinds so far experienced in achieving it. Taking account of the growing expectation that new nature markets will play a leading role in financing nature recovery, it then looks in detail at the risks and opportunities market mechanisms present and the steps the UK Government will need to take to oversee and regulate their use. Subsequent sections consider the essential and ongoing role of the public sector in supporting nature recovery and its under utilised potential to drive change.
Commissioned by the Woodland Trust, the research is intended to draw out key issues for policy makers and to stimulate thinking and debate.
Tropical forests dominate terrestrial photosynthesis, yet there are major contradictions in our understanding due to a lack of field studies, especially outside the tropical Americas. A recent field study indicated that West African forests have among the highest forests gross primary productivity (GPP) yet observed, contradicting models that rank them lower than Amazonian forests. Here, we explore possible reasons for this data-model mismatch. We found the in situ GPP measurements higher than multiple global GPP products at the studied sites in Ghana. The underestimation of GPP by models largely disappears when a standard photosynthesis model is informed by local field-measured values of (a) fractional absorbed photosynthetic radiation (fAPAR), and (b) photosynthetic traits. Satellites systematically underestimate fAPAR in the tropics due to cloud contamination issues. The study highlights the potential widespread underestimation of tropical forests GPP and carbon cycling and hints at the ways forward for model and input data improvement.
Highlights
• Local planning constraints deliver poor biodiversity net gain (BNG) offsets
• Removing those constraints results in significant BNG improvements
• Alternatively, offsets can deliver gains in environmental access
Tree diseases are one of the major threats to forests worldwide. As the frequency and severity of disease outbreaks increase, effective prevention and mitigation strategies are urgently needed. Emerging methods are available to tackle this issue, however, trade-offs and potential ecological consequences should be considered for successful forest preservation.