Using dendrochronology to investigate wet woodland response to climate change and land management pressures

Lead Supervisor: Dr Scott Davidson

Duration: 6 weeks

Suitable undergraduate degrees: Environmental Science, Environmental Management and Sustainability, Geography, Ecology

Project background

Wet woodlands are unique, understudied peat-forming forested wetlands in the UK. These ecosystems have a significant potential role for climate change mitigation, as an important but poorly quantified carbon sink and store. However, to date we have a poor understanding of their fundamental ecosystem processes, partly due to a shortage of data on carbon stocks, carbon flows, biodiversity, and hydrology.

This limits our ability to assess the climate resilience of these ecosystems, and their ability to respond and adapt to potential changes in land use, or the impacts of climate change.  If we are to preserve the importance of these ecosystems and understand their potential for helping us achieve net zero emissions, we need to fully understand their vulnerability. This is especially important as peat-forming wet woodlands are often found in highly fragmented, agriculture-dominated landscapes, and thus can be a refugia of ecosystem services and processes. The benefits of preserving these ecosystems are likely to be substantial, given what we already know about other forested wetland systems globally. Understanding more about peat-forming wet woodlands and their potential for carbon accumulation will help us improve decisions around land-use and afforestation for climate change mitigation, and their specific role as a nature-based solution to climate change.

This project will investigate how wet woodland tree species respond to both climate and land-management pressures using dendrochronology (tree ring measurements). Tree cores will be collected from different species and sized trees within the wet woodland at Goss Moor National Nature Reserve, Cornwall. We anticipate 10 – 30 cores per species collected in spring/summer. The tree cores will be collected using a 5mm dia. increment borer which is non-destructive. Other measurements include tree species, breast-height diameter, tree height, structure and condition, vegetation surveys and other environmental parameters. The tree growth rings will be analysed and compared to carbon dynamics, climate and ecohydrological data collected through ongoing monitoring as part of Emma Duley’s ARIES funded PhD.