Very pleasing to see this research and activity and relevance to our future. Best endeavours and contribution to the White Rose forest ecosystem . Wish I could contribute... from a Yorkshireman in Manchester ( planting a few acorns this autumn) Manchester bee of industry to all involved .
Hi, the soils on site aren't really suitable for planting crops so the land was used for grazing. This means we didn't need to plough or do any substantial preparation of the soil before tree planting but it also means that livestock faeces made a lot of nitrogen available for fast-growing low-diversity grasses. The preparation we needed to do was therefore mostly mowing and moving grass off site instead of letting it mulch down in place. Careful mowing has helped prevent our trees from being outcompeted while they're still small.
Hello, this is a great question! It might have been a little unclear in the video but the fence actually only goes around the part of the site which has been left unplanted (because we don't know where seedlings will naturally recruit). The tubes remain necessary to effectively protect the much larger planted area of the site. All the tubes will be collected in and reused or recycled once the trees are well enough established to survive grazing pressures.
This is a really good point! Part of it is just because there will be substantially less of the dead material that fungi like to grow on versus an established woodland BUT there may be opportunities to bring in some dead wood from neighbouring sites in the coming years to kick start the process a bit early, once the trees have grown enough to offer at least a little shade.
Why not just fence off the land to allow natural regeneration? Then we'd see how nature works with trees arriving and growing spontaneously. Although this may be slower to get a woodland started, once the natural seedlings get underway they grow faster and stronger than transplants. I've witnessed this myself over 25 years, watching derelict hop fields turning into woodland. One half planted, the other natural regeneration. The main advantage of planting is that you can choose species to serve a desired function, like orchard trees. Otherwise natural regeneration is far more robust and doesn't require fields full of plastic tree guards.
This is actually one of the questions we're asking with the research done on site! We've done exactly that with a subsection of the woodland and will be monitoring how it grows, relative to the planted areas. We're keen to see all the hidden details of these different strategies so we can make informed recommendations for what to do on other similar sites. As you say, the success of natural recruitment has been seen on lots of other sites over the years and we're now trying to take these comparisons a step further through a much more rigorous study process. Our desired function in the planted areas is biodiversity and ecological complexity (not something that's a massively common focus compared to orchards or timber) so this means we can question whether natural recruitment is still even better than that, despite maybe having lower or less native biodiversity on the neighbouring sites which form our primary seed sources.
We understand the concern! Sycamore can be a real nuisance when planted as a single species or outside of woodlands because of how prolifically they spread. However, they also make an excellent habitat and food resource for lots of our native wildlife. We've planted them with careful consideration of how many we include relative to other species and of their distribution on site, to make sure we can get the benefits of their diversity without them being able to outcompete other species. We'll be carefully monitoring and managing this woodland as necessary too once the trees get to an age where they're able to produce seed!
When doing these projects, never seen anyone dump a pile of rocks for small creatures and insects to hide and live in and I wonder why. Not talking huge piles just a 2 foot high, 1 square yard areas put in between trees. When the land first had the trees removed the farmers had to remove lots of rocks too. What you are creating is a rock desert, old growth forests have rocks in them. Also the land was levelled so include some piles of dirt and dig some holes you don’t put trees in if you really want to re-wild an area. What you have there is land that will all drain at the same rate, the Earth is not like that.
This is a really good thought process and one we've considered carefully. An exciting preview of the coming year is that we'll be creating ponds at Gair Wood which will help to shape the land a little more complexly but also we've been sure to retain the existing ditches and contours of the land during planting. One of the really great things about the site is that it actually does have a lot of rocks for small creatures and insects because the internal field margins are marked out with dry stone walls. This gives long corridors of rocks to fill these ecological niches and support biodiversity!
We're trying this out on some of the site but our research is deepening our understanding of the pros and cons of multiple woodland creation techniques. See, for example, the area which we've left to recruit seedlings naturally from neighbouring woodland. We've not planted everything and we won't be mowing it but we've added a fence to keep out the hares and deer that would otherwise eat the natural seedlings before they got a chance to establish
Great idea !
Very pleasing to see this research and activity and relevance to our future.
Best endeavours and contribution to the White Rose forest ecosystem .
Wish I could contribute...
from a Yorkshireman in Manchester
( planting a few acorns this autumn)
Manchester bee of industry to all involved .
fantastic job from the whole team, congratulations to you all!!
Wow! Well done Leeds!
Bonjour à vous😊Quel beau projet!❤❤❤😊
Good job
Would love to read the clinical papers published by Leeds University in the coming years
Was the land previously row cropped? If so, did you all bottom plow to break up the hard pan that develops from that practice?
Hi, the soils on site aren't really suitable for planting crops so the land was used for grazing. This means we didn't need to plough or do any substantial preparation of the soil before tree planting but it also means that livestock faeces made a lot of nitrogen available for fast-growing low-diversity grasses. The preparation we needed to do was therefore mostly mowing and moving grass off site instead of letting it mulch down in place. Careful mowing has helped prevent our trees from being outcompeted while they're still small.
Great project but given you have surrounded the wood with deer fencing did you really need to use those plastic tubes?
Hello, this is a great question! It might have been a little unclear in the video but the fence actually only goes around the part of the site which has been left unplanted (because we don't know where seedlings will naturally recruit). The tubes remain necessary to effectively protect the much larger planted area of the site. All the tubes will be collected in and reused or recycled once the trees are well enough established to survive grazing pressures.
I have always wondered why they don't add mushrooms into the program. they are vital to forests.
This is a really good point! Part of it is just because there will be substantially less of the dead material that fungi like to grow on versus an established woodland BUT there may be opportunities to bring in some dead wood from neighbouring sites in the coming years to kick start the process a bit early, once the trees have grown enough to offer at least a little shade.
Why not just fence off the land to allow natural regeneration? Then we'd see how nature works with trees arriving and growing spontaneously. Although this may be slower to get a woodland started, once the natural seedlings get underway they grow faster and stronger than transplants. I've witnessed this myself over 25 years, watching derelict hop fields turning into woodland. One half planted, the other natural regeneration. The main advantage of planting is that you can choose species to serve a desired function, like orchard trees. Otherwise natural regeneration is far more robust and doesn't require fields full of plastic tree guards.
This is actually one of the questions we're asking with the research done on site! We've done exactly that with a subsection of the woodland and will be monitoring how it grows, relative to the planted areas. We're keen to see all the hidden details of these different strategies so we can make informed recommendations for what to do on other similar sites. As you say, the success of natural recruitment has been seen on lots of other sites over the years and we're now trying to take these comparisons a step further through a much more rigorous study process. Our desired function in the planted areas is biodiversity and ecological complexity (not something that's a massively common focus compared to orchards or timber) so this means we can question whether natural recruitment is still even better than that, despite maybe having lower or less native biodiversity on the neighbouring sites which form our primary seed sources.
planting sycamore ! dear oh dear what were you thinking ?
We understand the concern! Sycamore can be a real nuisance when planted as a single species or outside of woodlands because of how prolifically they spread. However, they also make an excellent habitat and food resource for lots of our native wildlife. We've planted them with careful consideration of how many we include relative to other species and of their distribution on site, to make sure we can get the benefits of their diversity without them being able to outcompete other species. We'll be carefully monitoring and managing this woodland as necessary too once the trees get to an age where they're able to produce seed!
When doing these projects, never seen anyone dump a pile of rocks for small creatures and insects to hide and live in and I wonder why. Not talking huge piles just a 2 foot high, 1 square yard areas put in between trees. When the land first had the trees removed the farmers had to remove lots of rocks too. What you are creating is a rock desert, old growth forests have rocks in them. Also the land was levelled so include some piles of dirt and dig some holes you don’t put trees in if you really want to re-wild an area. What you have there is land that will all drain at the same rate, the Earth is not like that.
This is a really good thought process and one we've considered carefully. An exciting preview of the coming year is that we'll be creating ponds at Gair Wood which will help to shape the land a little more complexly but also we've been sure to retain the existing ditches and contours of the land during planting. One of the really great things about the site is that it actually does have a lot of rocks for small creatures and insects because the internal field margins are marked out with dry stone walls. This gives long corridors of rocks to fill these ecological niches and support biodiversity!
Derek Gow has at coombeshead
Or you could have just stopped mowing and the trees would have planted themselves.
We're trying this out on some of the site but our research is deepening our understanding of the pros and cons of multiple woodland creation techniques. See, for example, the area which we've left to recruit seedlings naturally from neighbouring woodland. We've not planted everything and we won't be mowing it but we've added a fence to keep out the hares and deer that would otherwise eat the natural seedlings before they got a chance to establish