Plymouth Woodland Project is launched

Alison Smith has secured a £55,000 grant from The Heritage Lottery Fund to start the Plymouth Woodland Project. At the moment, Alison is the community scientist with Open Air Laboratories (OPAL), based in Biological Sciences at Plymouth University.

John Randall and Fran Dansie, from the Friends of Ham Woods, Malcolm Allen, from The Woodland Trust, and
Alison Smith, from Plymouth University at Ham Woods at the launch of the Plymouth Woodland Project.

About 20% of Plymouth is covered by woodland. The Plymouth Woodland Project will work with Plymouth City Council, The Woodland Trust, the National Trust, local schools and community groups. The idea is to encourage citizen scientists to get involved in the city's woodlands, and learn about biodiversity, monitoring methods and sustainable management.

Alison herself has recently started a PhD with Paul Ramsay on woodland monitoring in Plymouth and rural Devon. An important part of her PhD involves the use of sophisticated scientific monitoring to refine the methods that could be used by citizen scientists in the future.

It is anticipated that undergraduate students on our courses will have the opportunity to help out with the project and some will be able to do their own research work as part of the wider Plymouth Woodland Project.

You can read more on the grant and project launch in an article from the Plymouth Herald here.

Incidentally,the University was awarded more than £600,000 last year by the Heritage Lottery and Big Lottery Funds, as part of the The Parks for People programme, to restore Drake's Reservoir as a city landmark. More on this project here.