Summer School Online Session 2

Photo: Meadow in the Alice Holt Forest.

On February 29, 2024, we had our second summer school session. We had the privilege of having two presentations about the Alice Holt Forest:

• An Introduction to Alice Holt Forest Centre by Nick Wardlaw (Forestry England)
• Alice Holt Long-Term Carbon Dioxide Flux Monitoring Site by Mike Bell (Forest Research)

The format consisted of a 20-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute Q&A for each of the presentations. Find below the two video recordings of the session. Thanks to both Nick and Mike for sharing their knowledge with us and feel free to leave any comment below. Enjoy!

An Introduction to Alice Holt Forest Centre by Nick Wardlaw (Forestry England)

The Q&A was hosted by Peter Batchelor. The questions that emerged after this talk concerned realising that there is no mains power in general and only some mobile network operators have good coverage in the area (e.g. O2, Vodafone); the importance of finding a good location for the exhibitions; the practicalities of deciding what is a good range so that there is diversity but also proximity among the different exhibits (except for Pete’s 1-year multichannel sound installation, the installations will be open to the audience for 4 hours on June 20, 2024!); the need for declaring method statements and risk assessments way before the exhibition; the relevance of having an overview of the visitor data; and a general engagement with the site beyond trees, also covering funghae and local species.

Alice Holt Long-Term Carbon Dioxide Flux Monitoring Site by Mike Bell (Forest Research)

The Q&A was hosted by Peter Batchelor as well. The follow-up discussions related to the discovery of many cool sensors used in the Straits Inclosure and whether we can get access to the archival data or real-time data for the summer school exhibits. As part of the project, it might be possible to stream some data from maybe a CO2 sensor measuring the concentration of CO2, a dendrometer measuring the growth of trees, air temperature, humidity… It was also discussed the measurement of shortwave/longwave radiation and what is the transformation that happens when radiation hits the ground and comes back up apart from photosynthesis, which connects with the Earth’s radiation budget.

All in all, we had a great time discovering the Alice Holt site and we can’t wait for the next session! Stay tuned!