October 2014

Carbon Cycling: from Plants to Ecosystems

This was the title of a two day workshop held last week in Manchester under the auspices of the British Ecological Society (BES). A friendly meeting with many excellent presentations. Andy Moffat and colleagues from Forest Research presented findings from monitoring and chronosequence studies, in contrast to most of the others which were based on experimentation. Of course, there are many approaches to scientific investigation, but it seems that those who believe in the value of monitoring have to speak more and more loudly in order to retain valuable monitoring platforms. In Andy’s talk, on the carbon stocks in GB forest soils and deadwood, the opportunity to use various forest monitoring platforms was shared, and it is to be hoped that more will do so. These sentiments also appear to have been voiced in a meeting on biodiversity in Scotland earlier in the month!