Rob Marrs (Liverpool University) reports on the mini conference that took place in June on the 5 Moor House LTEs . Alongside talks, delegates had the opportunity for a tour of the sites.
On 25th June, almost 60 delegates met at the High Force Hotel just outside of Middleton-on-Teesdale to highlight some of the pioneering work on upland experimental ecology that has been carried out on the Moor House National Nature Reserve since it was established in 1952. We started off with a brief introduction to Moor House by Rob Marrs (Liverpool University) who concentrated on the site’s history and a few key results along with a few anecdotes about some of the personalities involved. He also described how Moor House was set up as a reserve for research, and had a focus on long-term studies from the outset. It is now an important site for monitoring change in the Environmental Change Network. It is one of 11 sites spread across the UK which are co-ordinated by UKCEH.
There are four sets of experiments comparing the effects of continuous sheep-grazing relative to no-sheep-grazing. Each was set up on different plant community types: blanket bog and high-level grasslands (which both started in the mid-1950s), and intermediate grasslands and high-level bog, which began in in the late 1960s. There is a fifth experiment, the Hard Hill grazing and burning experiment that started in the mid-1950s which has yielded a huge amount of information on the impacts of heather burning.
After this introduction, we decamped into a series of 4wd vehicles for the drive up to Moor House itself, parking just below where the old house was near the Bog End track. We walked along the Bog End track to a more recent experiment run by the University of Leeds. Their experiment tested the installation of moorland tracks on moorland vegetation, and the underlying peat and hydrology. There we had two presentations. Martin Furness, the Natural England Moor House reserve manager expanded upon the earlier historic overview. David Baines, formerly of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, reported on his long-term work on grouse and wader populations at Moor House and neighbouring estates.
Rob Marrs and Andreas Heinemeyer (University of York) contributed with information on the peatland system and the overall moorland management. We also got sight of the Bog End exclosure (blanket bog sheep grazing study, see above), and some of the experimental tree plantations that were established in the 1960s/70s.
All good things must come to an end, and we returned to High Force for lunch and some post-prandial lectures by Andreas Heinemeyer on managing peatlands, carbon cycling and management. Following his talk, David Jarrett spoke about the Heather Trust’s own Heather Futures project, which is in its infancy. Rob Marrs then chaired a final discussion session which, at the delegates request, moved on to bracken control, which is not a major issue on the Moor House reserve.
All in all, a great day which was helped massively by running it on a National Nature Reserve that had been the focus of much research activity. We estimate that there are close to 1000 referenced publications from work done on the reserve. The fact that some of the experiments on the ECT’s register are still relevant was much appreciated by the delegates. Throughout the day, it was emphasised the experiments were intended to continue for 60-100 years from the outset. Overall, a great advertisement for the ECT and its aims, and this meeting highlighted the role that ECT experiments can have in getting the message about long-term ecological thinking across to stakeholders.
