Our Involvement

Forest Research has a longstanding interest and involvement in environmental monitoring of forests, and as an Associated Beneficiary in the FutMon project, is leading the further development of intensive monitoring in the UK in order that it can deliver important information of national, European and international relevance.

The project had several work packages. Those in which Forest Research participated include:

• Revision of large-scale monitoring systems aiming at maximising synergies between forest condition monitoring and the UK National Forest Inventory (work packages L1 and L2).
• Intensive monitoring on ten monitoring plots, including crown condition, mortality, removals, forest growth, foliar chemistry and litterfall, ground vegetation, soil condition and soil solution chemistry, deposition and meteorology (work package IM1).
• Collection of more comprehensive data on tree vitality, including assessments of leaf area index, monitoring of phenological events using webcams, continuous measurements of stem circumference, assessments of damage causes, assessments of litterfall (work package D1).
• Monitoring of element fluxes and nutrient cycling with a view to critical loads assessments (work package D2).
• Development and application of water budget models with a view to the response of drought stress of trees e.g. as a consequence of climate change, as well as to nutrient uptake and growth (work package D3).

In addition, we participated in a number of sub projects which involve interlaboratory comparisons of soil, water and plant tissue analyses.

Status

This project ran through 2009 and 2010 and the data forms part of the overall Intensive forest monitoring in support of ICP Forests programme which is ongoing.