Carbon & Trees

Phil Wilkes

Presentation: From Ancient Woods to Exotic Trees: Measuring Carbon Across Kew Wakehurst

Kew Wakehurst sits within the western arm of the High Weald National Landscape. Like much of the UK countryside, its character has been shaped by centuries of changing land management practices. This talk explores how that historical land management has influenced the quantity and resilience of carbon stored in trees and woodlands across the estate. Using remote sensing, we estimate aboveground carbon across semi-natural and production woodlands, as well as within Wakehurst’s diverse botanic collections, revealing how past management continues to shape today’s carbon landscape.

Biography

Phil Wilkes is a Research Leader at Kew Wakehurst and leads the Nature Unlocked science team. He has a background in remote sensing of vegetation, in particular using LiDAR, and has worked on projects ranging from characterising the diverse forests of Australia to measuring ancient oaks trees across the UK.

Phil’s current work at Kew focuses on how to measure ecosystems services across different UK habitats and what this may tell us about the climate resilience of our countrysides.

Mat Disney

Presentation: A new look at Giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in the UK: where, why and how are they doing?

Once you start seeing them, you can't stop. After working in redwood forests in the US I was intrigued by just how many Sequoiadendron there are in the UK landscape, often in seemingly totally unsituable locations. I was also interested in the history of their introduction here and across Europe, along with the enduring attraction they seem to have. They are still quite widely planted, even in urban areas, and yet there seemed to be very little hard evidence of how they are doing here in general. I will present our work looking at these tree to estimate growth and carbon storage. I'll also show examples of the most incongrous ones I've found, outline some possible pros and cons of our ongoing fascination with them and discuss some of the interesting responses we've had to this work.

Biography

Mat’s scientific background was originally in physics and then he moved into modelling vegetation for satellite observations, particularly large scale ecological applications to forest function. Over the last 15 years Mat has focused on using lidar to look in more detail at tree structure and function, particularly in tropical forests but also in urban and temperate forests. He works with a range of organisations including space agencies such as ESA and NASA to help underpin new satellite missions looking at forest biomass, as well as national forestry agencies, conservation groups etc. He is interested in extremes of growth and function. Large, old trees store a lot of carbon and are key reservoirs of genetic information and biodiversity but are very hard to measure via traditional methods. Terrestrial lidar offers a new insight into these trees to assess health and ecosystem function and hence inform management and protection.