Long-term Observations and Experiments Day

A one-day meeting to explore the issues faced by long-term ecological studies.

Wytham Woods Walk

The value of long-term observations and experiments has been widely acknowledged, but at the same time maintaining such experiments, or finding the funds to re-record permanent plot systems continues to be a problem. Most ecologists will at some time have come across potentially useful experiments that lasted only a few years and were then abandoned; old plots where the original observations have been lost; old records where the plots have been lost. Why does this keep happening? What practical steps can we take to it more likely that treatments, plots and observations survive and are known about, so they can be repeated?

This one-day meeting will explore these questions in relation to both woodland and grassland examples in the morning through talks by George Peterken and Jonathan Silvertown followed by discussion. In the afternoon there will be a visit to Wytham Woods to see various examples of long-term studies, with consideration of the issues involved in their maintenance.

Organised for the Forest Ecology Group (British Ecological Society) and Wytham Woods, University of Oxford, by Dr Keith Kirby.

For full details and to book your place, please click here.