Natural woodland formation
by The blog at woodlands.co.uk, 25 June, 2021, 0 comments
Monks Wood is an area of woodland in Cambridgeshire. It has been subject to extensive and intensive ecological studies for many years. The site is described by Natural England as one of our essential lowland woods with ash and field maple trees; also to be found is the rather rare wild service tree. The ground flora is typical of that of ancient woodland, within the wood there are also ponds and streams. Monks Wood is a National Nature Reserve.
Next to the reserve there is former agricultural land. Two fields have been studied to understand the process of natural woodland development. One field was formerly two acres of grassland that was ‘abandoned’ (in 1996), the other was a four acre barley field (that was left to stand in 1961). For natural regeneration of woodland to occur there needs to be existing woodland nearby. The transition of these fields to ‘new’ woodland has been monitored over the intervening years - through field surveys of trees, measurement of vegetation height, remote sensing via LIDAR. Read more...
