Woodland Surveyors
Volunteer Request
Assisting with The Urban Ancient Woodlands PhD Project
The Milton Keynes semi-natural ancient woodlands are being studied as part of an Open University PhD project to understand impacts of urbanisation on ancient woodland. By carrying out vegetation surveys and looking at records of plants found in these ancient woodlands from the 1960s to today, researchers are investigating how impacts such as pollution and visitor pressure have influenced the ecology of the woodlands as Milton Keynes was built around them. We now need some volunteer assistance to count woodland visitors to find out just how many people visit the woods each year and how much this affects woodland soils and biodiversity.
This volunteer request is for help with visitor counts and interactive surveys in our three ancient woodlands in Milton Keynes throughout the year for the PhD study.
Survey design:
The standard practice is to count throughout the day in four 2-hour periods over four times a year per site (early spring, late spring, summer, autumn)
We require several pairs of volunteers for each 2-hour survey period throughout the day.
Volunteers will be stationed at woodland entrances to count visitor numbers with clickers. They may also help researchers with questionnaire surveys to find out more about where people go in the woods and how frequently they visit but not essential. The survey is designed to see how our messaging and information signage is working, especially with regards to dogs on leads policy.
A hybrid online Training Induction evening is arranged for Thursday 23rd February at 7pm
Book your place on the Training Induction here:
https://theparkstrust.digitickets.co.uk/event-tickets/46675?catID=16267&
For more information contact Carla Boswell
