25 February 2025

EXEC’S CORNER

A very warm welcome to our first 2025 issue of ECT’s two-monthly newsletter. Spring is not far away and many of you will be preparing long-term experiments (LTEs) for the new growing season. One such LTE which is - as I write - a hive of activity in the run-up to the new growing season is RainDrop. You will see from the items further below how RainDrop has been something of a focus for our comms in the early weeks of this year - with a webinar, blog article and new podcast all featuring - but the experiment has reached more than one milestone in its first eight years. The experiment’s rain shelters (pictured above) have aged significantly in that time and are now being fully replaced at the site ahead of the new growing season, with funding from both ECT and the Patsy Wood Trust. We hope the refurbished shelters will be good for at least another eight years!

This draws into sharp focus one of the many challenges that come with running long-term experiments and, indeed, engaging more generally in long-term thinking - how to maintain experimental infrastructure beyond the constraints of standard grant cycles. ECT stands as a unique national charity dedicated to ‘championing’ and supporting the maintenance of all LTEs on our national register when resources allow. We are a growing charity with new strategic partnerships that extend our influence and are helping us to harness more support than ever before. We continue our quest to see the importance of LTEs more widely recognised and given the funding that is needed to secure that hard-won knowledge that only comes from running an experiment outdoors for many years.

Ben Sykes

NEW SMALL GRANT AWARD

ECT’s small grants scheme has now reopened for 2025 following temporary closure in July last year due to increased demand.

We have awarded our first small grant of the year to Andrew Hacket-Pain (University of Liverpool) and colleagues at Bangor University for monitoring work at the Lady Park Wood transects. This award is co-funded by our grants scheme partner the Ramble Worldwide Outdoor Trust and will contribute towards consumables and travel costs for fieldwork that takes the recording of woodland “rewilding” at this unique site into a ninth decade!

ECT ON BLUESKY

We are now posting on the Bluesky social media platform. Please do follow us at our new handle @ect-uk.bsky.social.

BIFoR-FACE IN THE MEDIA

BIFoR-FACE was featured in an article in BBC Earth last month.

NEW PAPERS

Park Grass: A new open access paper in npj Biodiversity shows that using high amounts of fertiliser to increase yields reduces flowering plants and pollinator biodiversity. Read the paper.

Glen Finglas: a new paper from this 23-year-long upland grazing experiment in northwest Scotland has just been published in the Journal of Avian Biology on using drone surveys to assess the impacts of livestock grazing on upland bird breeding territories. Read the paper.

Hordron Edge: A new publication in the Journal of Environmental Management has shown that bracken control can be successful, and that even light sheep grazing can restrict its recovery at Hordron Edge in Derbyshire. Read more on this experiment.

Nash’s Field: A new paper in Ecological Informatics from the Nash’s field LTE has shown that combining a specific imaging technique with a statistical model can improve the remote sensing of grassland vegetation properties. Read the paper.

Peatland-ES-UK: A new paper in the Journal of Environmental Management investigates the most appropriate sampling strategy for testate amoebae, bioindicators of peatland restoration success. See the paper.

A long-term experiment in China has found that whilst grazing can promote the recovery of grassland, strong winds have a negative effect on this habitat. Read the paper in Journal of Applied Ecology [Paywalled]

Forest diversity experiments in Satakunta, Finland were used as case studies to look at the effects of temporal changes in tree diversity on forest ecosystem functioning. Read the paper in Oikos. [Open Access]

The effects of assisted migration on oak-herbivore interactions has been examined by using the Climate Match forest diversity experiment in Kent, UK. Read the paper in Plant, Cell and Environment. [Open Access]

Would you consider donating to the ECT? Help us secure long-term experiments for the future by making a donation Donate to the ECT.

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ECT receives core funding from the British Ecological Society.