In the early 1970s, Woodland Trust founder Kenneth Watkins was leading the charge in UK woodland conservation by securing our first ancient woodland site in Devon. At around the same time, another woodland visionary was planning a grand survey of Britain’s broadleaf woodlands – Professor Robert Bunce. An eminent ecologist, Professor Bunce chose 103 woods across England, Scotland and Wales for an in-depth survey of their trees, shrubs, plants and soil. The survey was repeated in 2001 and we now have a third dataset from 2021, making the Bunce survey one of the longest running woodland vegetation surveys in the world.
About the Speakers
Dr Simon Smart
Simon is a botanist and ecologist who has worked at the UK Centre of Ecology & Hydrology for 28 years. He led the second of the Bunce surveys of British broadleaved woodlands in 2001 and the latest that ended in 2022. He is interested in answering questions about the dynamics and drivers of ecological change and has led a range of projects investigating the causes and consequences of large-scale changes in plant species composition. Simon also managed the development of the MultiMOVE package of realized niche models for British plant species and, in 2010/’11, won an 8 month fellowship at the Harvard Forest developing and applying Bayesian path analysis techniques to better understand the effects of the October 1987 storm on woodlands in southern England. In December 2019 he took over as Head of the Land-Use Group at UKCEH Lancaster then the Head of Site role in 2021.
Find out more at: The Bunce survey | Woodland Trust; Bunce Woodland Survey | UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
