It’s a morning of unseasonal sun and blue skies in this part of the West Midlands, where I’m visiting a private woodland that is little-known but important. Across its 21 hectares are more than 20 mature and semi-mature species, including beech, willow, yew, elm and alder; all beginning to turn but not yet displaying their autumn brilliance. One area is of particular interest, containing oaks around 180 years old, coppiced common hazel, sycamore, hazel, hawthorn, plus some ash and holly.
It is here that the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) is testing how Britain’s trees might adapt to our changing environmental conditions. You might never know this was occurring until you come across one of the many steel towers here, which, despite being tucked away between the trees, are huge structures soaring above the treetops to 40 metres.
The towers are arranged into three rings, with each tower pumping carbon dioxide into the air around the trees. The idea is to create the atmospheric conditions the world is predicted to have by 2050, if fossil fuel use continues as “business as usual” between now and then – the world permanently passed 400 parts per million (ppm) in 2016. It was around the same time that BIFoR’s Face (Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment) team switched on the experiment here, and they will continue to monitor the trees’ progress until at least 2026.
The towers are busy but silent, the only real sound the crunch of acorns as I walk. The sky’s the limit in terms of what information can be gleaned from this experiment; using control groups, the research team will look at how the trees respond to a more carbon-heavy atmosphere, in particular whether the trees will grow faster and lock away more carbon, how resilient they are to invasive pests and disease, and whether the changes to the soil and insect life cause problems around the woodland.
Ultimately, this kind of data will help us to know which tree species are likely to thrive as Britain’s climate changes, and which species won’t – and plant accordingly. Walking around these thousands of magnificent specimens, with the earth pungent with autumn smells, it seems a tragedy that it must even be studied at all.
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