NetZeroPlus Fieldnotes: Alice Holt Research Station
Members of the NetZeroPlus research team held a two-day meeting at one of the Greenhouse Gas Removal Demonstrator Research sites, Forest Research’s Alice Holt Research Station earlier this month.
World leading researchers from Forest Research, who are part of the NetZeroPlus research team welcomed the project lead researcher, Professor Ian Bateman, to the Research Station.
In the Data Centre
Robert Matthews, James Morison, Stephen Bathgate, and Kate Beauchamp met with Ian on day one. Meetings focussed on the rich sources of historic and new forest information from measurements and models of forest growth that Forest Research holds, as well as some of the exciting new data being collected via our joint NetZeroPlus programme.
The data collected can be modelled by the team and combined with other land use information to help inform our understanding of tree growth and carbon storage in the future, and ensure that plans are made for planting and managing forests sustainably in the light of environmental change.
In Forest and Field
Day two was spent in the field, visiting Forest Research’s long term C and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) monitoring site. James Morrison, Elena Vanguelova, Matthew Wilkinson, and Mike Bell led a site visit to see the Alice Holt flux tower at the Straits Inclosure where the fluxes of carbon dioxide, water and energy between the forest and the atmosphere are measured in real time using eddy covariance.
And the team also inspected a newly installed eddy covariance mast at an adjacent agricultural grassland site – made available through NetZeroPlus leveraged funding. This mast forms part of a network of greenhouse gas monitoring stations across the UK. Measurements at this grassland site will enable our team to compare the data with the woodland site and improve our understanding of woodland sites for potential to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere across the UK.
Forest Research Alice Holt Research Station
The Forest Research Alice Holt Research Station is a long term research site providing insights into:
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- Forest carbon dynamics
- Intensive forest monitoring
- Tree health
The Forest Research scientists are the leading group on understanding the full benefits of woodland and the Research centre of vital importance to long term scientific forest research.
