Annual Meeting 2012

Theme

Trees, farms and ecosystem services

Dates

The meeting took place from Thursday 24th May to Friday 25th May 2012

Location

Bangor, North Wales

Organiser

Dr James Walmsley, School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University, Deinol Road, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2UW

Schedule

The ecosystem service approach offers the potential to enhance decision-making related to land management.
Wales sees itself as a pioneer in this field and policy developments (specifically the Natural Environment Framework), as well as grant schemes and other initiatives, reflect this.  The establishment of a Single Environment Body potentially presents new opportunities for enhancing the delivery of ecosystem services. Yet pressing questions remain:
  • What ecosystem services do current farm woodland activities deliver?
  • How can they be measured?
  • How can existing farm woodland activities be best incorporated into the ecosystem services framework?
  • What tools exist?
  • On what scale can/should ecosystem services be assessed?
  • Does the approach allow more transparent and holistic decision making that takes all affected parties into account?
This event provided an opportunity for farmers and farm woodland owners, policy makers, land managers, researchers and other interested parties to find out more about how the ecosystem services approach has been adopted, the lessons learned to date and the potential for further implementation.  We also provided an update on the newly founded European Agroforestry Federation (EURAF).
 
24th May - Presentations, lectures and networking at Henfaes Research Centre, Bangor University, LL33 0LB.
25th May - Visit to Esgair Forest (courtesy of Peter Bottoms).
 
No data or images to be copied from this report (or the presentations within it) without the written permission of the author(s).
 
The meeting commenced at Henfaes Research Station (Bangor University) with talks by:
 
  • Tamas Szedlak (DG Agriculture and Rural Development, European Commission) - Agroforestry in rural development programmes, 2007-2013 and beyond.
  • John Kort (Agroforestry Development Centre, Canada) - Agroforestry in Canada.
  • David Jenkins (Coed Cymru) - Pontbren, 10 years on.
  • Alexa Varah (Reading University) - Delivering multiple ecosystem services in UK agriculture; can agroforestry do it all?
  • Jo Smith (The Organic Research Centre) - Integrating bioenergy and dairy production systems.
  • Bianca Ambrose-Oji and Norman Dandy (Forest Research) - Trees, landowners and landscapes; what we know about decision making and ecosystem services.
  • Matt Upson and Paul Burgess (Cranfield University) - Comparison of carbon storage by an agroforestry system with agriculture.
  • Tim Pagella (Bangor University) - Participatory approaches to spatial planning for managing ecosystem service provision from farm woodlands.
The session was chaired by Fergus Sinclair (Bangor University and World Agroforestry Centre, ICRAF).
 
 
Field Visit Reports: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon Field Visit 2012.pdf1.09 MB

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