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 ECOLOGICAL CONTINUITY TRUST

ECT NEWSLETTER

22 June 2026

Photo showing a handful of sheep grazing by trees. Trees line the top of a hill in the distance.

EXEC’S CORNER

A very warm welcome to the June issue of ECT’s two-monthly newsletter at a time of year when the growing season at the long-term experiments (LTEs) on our national register is in full swing. As a reminder, there are over 80 LTEs on ECT’s register across the UK at various stages of their lifecycle, of which 39 remain currently-active and undergoing continuous treatments.

One of those 39 is the Loughgall agroforestry experiment (pictured above) in Northern Ireland which has been managed by the NI Agrifood & Biosciences Institute (AFBI) since it started in 1989. It is one of the rarer LTE types and habitats (woodland) represented on our register. I therefore wish to highlight here our call in this newsletter for ‘new’ LTE registration applications in habitats that are either under-represented in our current register or not represented at all. These include, for example, Atlantic rainforest or coastal saltmarsh. ECT has rigorous criteria for the admission of LTEs on to its register, since registration with us brings financial privileges in terms of access to our small grants scheme and a number of other gratis benefits. The chief criterion is that an LTE must have either been running continuously for at least 6 years, or have secured funding for at least 6 years into the future.

Please do contact me directly if you or any of your colleagues know of potentially qualifying LTEs anywhere in the UK in these ‘gap’ habitats that could benefit from being added to our national register. Thank you.

Ben Sykes

OUR NEWS

MIGNEINT BOG LTE

We are pleased to have launched our new webpage for the Migneint Bog LTE which was registered with us last year. This peatland restoration experiment in Snowdonia, Wales is managed by Dr Mike Peacock (University of Liverpool) and has been running since 2011. The LTE investigates the impacts of rewetting ditch-drained bog on the ecosystem.

ECT visited Migneint Bog in May to meet with Mike and record a podcast interview on a particularly inclement day! Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud. We also met the wider team and watched Mike demonstrate how the automated water table loggers are stored in situ in the dipwells at the site. This equipment was funded through ECT’s small grants scheme, with co-funding from the Ramble Worldwide Outdoor Trust.

Landscape photo showing the peatbog and vegetation.

Mike will be speaking at our next lunchtime webinar on 26 June - ‘15 Years of Research at the Migneint Bog Peat Re-wetting Experiment in Snowdonia' at 12:30pm. Email Danae Marshall-Dodge to register.

A man wearing a white hat is installing equipment as he kneels on the ground.

CALL FOR LTE REGISTRATIONS: UNREPRESENTED HABITATS

We wish to invite LTE registration applications from across the UK in habitats that are either currently under-represented on our national register or not represented at all. These include the following habitats in particular:

  • Atlantic rainforest

  • Coastal saltmarsh

  • Coastal dune

  • Marine

Recent experience has shown us that there may well be LTEs ‘out there’ across the UK that are unknown to ECT and that may well qualify against our assessment criteria for inclusion on our register. Registration brings many benefits to LTEs, including privileged access to our small grants scheme. Access our LTE Registration Form.

RESILIENT LANDSCAPES & SEAS (RLAS) PARTNERSHIP: 2027 SYMPOSIUM

We are very pleased to inform you that the second annual RLAS symposium will be taking place in Manchester on 3-4 February 2027. The broad theme will be Designing Landscape Projects for Impact. Please save the date in your diaries and look out for registration opening via Eventbrite later this summer.

The RLAS partnership has now also completed the design of a new online search tool for landscape-scale projects of 500ha or more in size. The database upon which it draws is now being populated by the RLAS partner organisations and other interested parties. It is expected that the link to this new search tool will be made public towards the end of July, after which the facility to update existing project details and add new ones will remain available in perpetuity so that the tool can be kept up-to-date by all stakeholders.

 A single rain shelter in a grassland field. Sun rays are hitting it.

LATEST SMALL GRANT

Our most recent small grant has been awarded jointly to Professor Andy Hector (University of Oxford) and Dr Kadmiel Maseyk (The Open University) for equipment replacement and plot maintenance costs at the RainDrop LTE. This award is co-funded by our grants scheme partner charity Ramble Worldwide Outdoor Trust.

If you receive a grant from us, please remember to acknowledge the ECT in papers. Thank you!

 

NETWORK NEWS

NEW PUBLICATIONS

A new paper from the BIFoR-FACE LTE in the Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition reports that different tree species and seasons can affect carbon sequestration. Another new paper from the same LTE in the New Phytologist describes how fine root biomass is affected by increased ambient CO₂.

A new paper from the North Wyke Farm Platform LTE in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment looks at the effects of converting grassland to arable farming on soil health and water quality.

By comparing the effects of different soil treatments on monoculture and polyculture, a new paper from the Park Grass LTE in PNAS discusses what the results mean for systems agroecology.

DEFRA’S NEW CHIEF SCIENTIST VISITS BIFOR-FACE

Defra’s Chief Scientist visited BIFoR-FACE in May to tour the facility and hear about the research that is conducted at this LTE. Read more about this visit.

Prof. Anjali Goswami (left) and Prof. Rob MacKenzie (right) touring the BIFoR FACE Facility. Credit: University of Birmingham.

An brown woman wearing a hard hat looks at the camera on the left. A white man wearing a hard hat on the right looks at the woman.
A view of the forest canopy from the ground. Metal infrastructure rises between the trees. Overlayed by a banner displaying the words “BIFoR Annual Meeting 2026 22 – 23 July”, and the BIFoR University of Birmingham logo.

BIFOR’S ANNUAL MEETING

BIFoR’s annual meeting ‘The Remembering Forest’ is taking place on 22-23 July at the University of Birmingham. This meeting will celebrate a decade of CO₂ enrichment at BIFoR-FACE and will include a half-day session in memoriam of Professor Stephen P. Long FRS. Everyone is welcome to attend this event which will explore how forests “remember” environmental change through biological, ecological and human interactions. Register for the meeting.

Photo credit: Tom Downes, design by Holly Martin.

ANNUAL BES CLIMATE CHANGE & ECOSYSTEM MEETING

The British Ecological Society Climate Change Ecology special interest group is hosting its annual meeting this September in Plymouth. Over two days, members of this group will present their work and discuss the impacts of climate change on ecosystem dynamics, and how they can be addressed. Register here.

SCOTLAND’S RURAL COLLEGE (SRUC) OPEN DAY 

Everyone is welcome to attend the annual open-day ‘Crop Systems Research Updates and Trial Site Visits 2026’ hosted at SRUC Aberdeen Campus on 8 July. Starting at 12pm, and over a light lunch, there will be talks on the latest crop and soil-systems research taking place at SRUC.

Afterwards, there will be a field visit to view several crop and soil-focused experiments, including two long-term experiments: pHoenix soil pH gradient (started in 1961) and the Tulloch Rotational Trial (started in 1991) which is currently funded through the Scottish Government. Register before 2 July.

WHAT IS NEXT FOR MOOR HOUSE HARD HILL?

Now that evidence and legislation have halted burning treatments at Moor House Hard Hill LTE, the question now is what will happen next for this site? Adam Rodgers from Natural England addresses this question. Read more.

Photo credit: Adam Rodgers.

A large landscape photo at the top showing a bog site. Two smaller photos underneath both showing fencing at the bog site.

UKCEH STUDY: HOW TERRAIN AFFECTS NITROGEN POLLUTION DEPOSITION

Reactive nitrogen (Nr) pollution deposition from air is a threat to UK biodiversity and freshwater systems. But accounting for the impact of the UK’s complex terrain on pollutant deposition remains a science and policy challenge: air quality and meteorological measurement networks are biased towards flat, lowland sites. Additionally, models cannot explicitly represent complex topography deposition processes.

Under Defra’s Natural Capital Ecosystem Assessment programme, the Environment Agency commissioned UKCEH to study Nr deposition differences between flat and complex topography.

Innovative rain and fog samplers were deployed at six UK sites in 2024/25 - the fog measurements being the first in 20 years. Two pairs of complex/ flat sites were used: Sellafield/ Ennerdale in Cumbria, and Jodrell Bank/ Holme’s Moss Observatory in the Peak District. The rural air quality supersites at Auchencorth Moss (which is in the same landscape as the Whim Bog LTE), and Chilbolton were used as flat lowland and upland sites.

Results from the Peak District site pair revealed that wet deposition in complex terrain site enhanced Nr deposition by over 75%, more than current models predict. Detailed analysis is in progress. But the project shows the need for improved monitoring network coverage, and the importance of rain and fog being assessed separately.

Photos: The full suite of wet and occult (fog) deposition monitoring equipment installed at the complex terrain sites at Ennerdale (left) and Holme Moss Summit (right) (Credit: UKCEH).

Monitoring equipment outdoors. Monitoring equipment in front of a fence.

OTHER NEWS

An LTE conducted by Forest Research at Hucking Estate, Kent since 2001 has shown how plant communities and soil properties of farmland changed as it slowly developed from ex-arable planted woodland. Read more.

If you like what we do, would you consider donating to the ECT?

Help us preserve long-term experiments so that the evidence from them can lead to changes in policymaking, sustainable land use and education.

 DONATE TO THE ECT 

FOCUS ON BAMFORD EDGE

Habitat: Heath

Location: Peak District, England

Running since: 2004

Experimental goal: To compare the effectiveness of 3 different bracken control methods

PI: Em. Prof. Rob Marrs, University of Liverpool

Listen: Rob Marr’s podcast interview

Watch: Rob Marrs’s webinar

See: Our webpage on the experiment

Middle photo: Rob Marrs.

Landscape photo showing the heathland, and hills in the distance. A white man drives a small utility vehicle on heathland. A large steep rocky outcropping on the right rises above the heathland.

OUR REACH

LinkedIn followers: 730 +8.3%

YouTube subscribers: 134 +0.7%

Instagram followers: 367 +1.3%

Bluesky: 402 +9.5%

Facebook: 32 +10.3%

LTE User Group members: 275 +0.3%

Quote overlaid on a photo of a stream running through a landscape which is filled with trees: "We are in this area where so much heritage of science has happened." Alan Radbourne on the Plynlimon LTE. From our podcast. Listen to the full interview.
 

The LTE User Group is a network of stakeholders passionate about LTEs and the results they generate. Find out more and how to join on our Join Us page.

Please get in contact if you have any information for us (for the website, newsletter, social media, or the blog page), or if you have any questions, or feedback on this newsletter.

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ECT receives core funding from the British Ecological Society.

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