Observatree VolunteerUpdate
Friday 13th October 2017
Welcome
Dear Observatree Volunteers,
Welcome to the first volunteer update of Observatree 2. It’s official! Our EU Life+ funding ended on 30th September and the next phase of the project has started in earnest. The project team are beavering away finishing the final report for our funder and then our focus will shift entirely to Observatree 2. Look out for the public announcement in the next few months.
I just want to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you for your contribution to Observatree so far. This project simply wouldn’t work without you so this is certainly a time to celebrateeverything you’ve achieved! I’ve included a summary of your hard work below, and I’m sure we can do even more over the next phase of the project.
What next?
As we move into the next phase of the project, we will be asking all volunteers to opt into Observatree 2 so we know that you are interested in remaining involved with the project. We will also issue revised task outlines (role descriptions) that will help to clarify what we’ll be offering to all volunteers and what we will expect from you. Things will continue as normal for now so please carry on with tree health site surveys and verification of Tree Alert reports.
New expense form
Please find attached an updated expenses form. This form is pre-coded so you can send the completed forms directly to the Woodland Trust finance team along with any receipts. Please double check the claim figures and ensure you sign and date the form before sending. I will approve all expense forms once they have been received and processed by the finance team.
The project team and I are looking forward to working with you to maintain the successful tree health early warning system that we have created over the past four years. Please do let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Here’s to Observatree 2!
Best wishes
Helen
Helen Jones
Citizen Science Officer (Observatree)
0343 7705692
Your amazing contribution to Observatree
Hours
Since the start of the project, you have contributed an incredible 13,216 hours of your time. Please continue to record your time spent on the project using the Observatree volunteer activity diary:
Site surveys
As tree health surveyors, you have carried out 2996 site surveys, 1046 of which found a pest or disease and 629 found a suspected Observatree priority pest or disease.
You have recorded sightings of 11 of the 12 priority pests and diseases already present in the UK:
- Acute oak decline
- Chalara dieback of Ash
- Dothistroma needle blight
- European mountain ash ringspot (EMARAV)
- Great spruce bark beetle
- Horse chestnut leaf miner
- Oak processionary moth
- Oriental Chestnut Gall Wasp
- Phytophthoraaustrocedri
- Phytophthoralateralis
- Sirococcus tsugae
Verification of Tree Alert reports
As desktop verifiers, you have worked on nearly 100 Tree Alert reports allowing the tree health diagnostic advisory team at Forest Research to focus on more serious cases:
- 99 have been sent to verifiers
- 62 have been verified
- 20 have been retrieved by Lucy (passed 2 week deadline and verifier had no response from reporter)
- 6 have received the information and hit verify but forgotten to fill in the verification tab
- 9 have hit verify but not filled in the verification tab because not received a response from the reporter
- 2 are currently being verified
Volunteer area of the project website and discussion forum
Did you know that the easiest way to communicate with our tree health scientists and other volunteers is through the volunteer forum?
This is a secure area of the Observatree which is only accessible to volunteers and project staff. This is perfect place to post a question or photo if you would like some advice from Observatree trainer and plant pathologist, Suzy Sancisi-Frey. You can also post messages for other volunteers, find out where people have been surveying and arrange informal get-togethers.
Along with the forum, you will find lots of useful documents and resources that you can download, and an online version of the site survey recording form. We’ve recently updated the site survey form so that you will receive a copy of the completed form via email so you know what you’ve submitted.
You can register for the volunteer area here if you haven’t already done so:
Sentinel trees update
Earlier this year, we launched the sentinel trees survey.As a variation to the existing tree health surveyor role, this survey aims to create a network of sentinel trees that will be surveyed on a regular basis to record their general health; identify new outbreaks of pests and diseases affecting them and to monitor rates of any decline.
This will be achieved by selecting a number of individual trees; identifying their species and checking them at regular intervals for signs and symptoms of the priority pests and diseases known to affect those species of tree.By visiting the same individual trees on a regular basis, we can accurately determine when a pest/disease arrives within the area and monitor the impacts on individual trees. The data collected will help to determine the rate of decline in the health of the trees once they have become infected or infested.
Thank you to those of you who have already identified your sentinel tree plots. We’re already receiving lots of useful data and photos on these trees, 142 reports to date.
Please continue to send through your survey results via
- the site survey form if you spot any new signs and symptoms
- anemail if the health status of the trees hasn’t changed
- Tree Alert if you spot any new sightings of a priority pest or disease
Observatree on the road
September has been another busy month for the Observatreeproject. I attended theConforWoodland Show at Longleat (see photo on right) and the annual ArboriculturalAssociation Amenity Conference at the University of Exeter. These events provide a great opportunity to promote the project and Tree Alert and to offer tree health advice to professionals and members of the public.
On 14th September, we held a very successful one day conference at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. The focus of this was ‘Pioneering Tree Health Citizen Science in the UK and Beyond.’
Attended by over 50delegates from both the UK and overseas, presentations were given about Observatree as well as international citizen science/tree health projects. These were complemented with Observatree related workshops and demonstrations that made the conference more interactive.
A huge thank you to David Griffith, Observatree volunteer from Herefordshire, who kindly agreed to deliver a presentation on his experience of the project. Thanks also go to the volunteers who attended the conference and spent time talking to delegates and answering their questions.
Read more about the conference in the latest Observatree blog here
Keep your eyes peeled for PPM, a plea from FC England
Pine processionary moth (PPM) caterpillars present a similar concern as their Oak counterparts. They can weaken trees by defoliation and pose a hazard to public health.
Pine can suffer from a range of pathogens that exist in the UK; PPM is not currently known to be present, but it has been extending its range across Europe towards the English Channel.
As Jane Barbrook from APHA said in her recent blog; negative is good! While you are out and about surveying, or just enjoying a walk, look around and report any stands of pine trees which are free of PPM using your site survey form. The Forestry Commission can use these reports to declare our pest free status, and by keeping an eye out. As usual, report any positive sightings of PPM via Tree Alert.
Having a group of volunteers who are passionate about trees and enjoy spending their free time learning about pests and diseases is a great resource for monitoring tree health in the UK, and data gathered, both positive and negative observations, can be incredibly useful.
Bacterial canker on ash
An interesting case study from volunteer Sue Quick, Derbyshire:
In Oct 2014, I sent in a report concerning a vertical bacterial canker in an Ash near my allotment and community orchard. I was concerned it might topple over onto a car or a visitor, but was reassured that this was unlikely.
This summer a large Ash suddenly toppled in the wind, fortunately not hitting any cars or other trees in our orchard. This was the tree adjacent to the original one reported, but did send out a bit of a warning for me and my fellow allotment owners.
This morning I passed the field and noticed the other tree was down. The tree was removed by the allotment group to prevent it from posing a threat to anyone using the car park. Both trees have been chopped up for fire wood.
A host of pest and disease updates
Managing the risks of Hylobiusabietis (large pine beetle) in restocking, FC Scotland:
The Large Pine Beetle (Hylobiusabietis) is the most significant pest in Scottish forestry, feeding on the stems of young trees on restock sites, often causing serious damage or death of the tree.
Populations of Hylobiusare large enough in some areas of Scotland to devastate a high proportion of a restock site. The management of Hylobius is a key thread running through the new Forest Enterprise Scotland Restocking Strategy, relating to the pace of restocking and minimising the use of pesticides.
Read the article in full here
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Small Pests: Big Problems. The global spread of bark beetles, Yale University:
First, mountain pine beetles devastated lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees across western North America. Then came spruce beetles, which have targeted high-elevation Engelmann spruce, spreading from New Mexico into Colorado and beyond. Altogether, with their advance fueled by climate change, bark beetles have ravaged 85,000 square miles of forest in the western United States — an area the size of Utah — since 2000. Pine beetles also have killed trees across roughly 65,000 square miles of forest in British Columbia, and in the southeastern U.S., they have caused millions of dollars of damage to the timber industry in states such as Alabama and Mississippi.
The beetles are now advancing up the Atlantic coast, reaching New York’s Long Island in 2014 and Connecticut the following year. A new study projects they could begin moving into the twisting pitch pines of New England and the stately red pines of Canada’s Maritime provinces by decade’s end. Warming winters could push the beetles north into Canada’s boreal forest within 60 years, climate scientists say.
Read the article on full here
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UK Calls for Action to Prevent Xylella’s Arrival, Olive Oil Times
As fears mount that trees in Britain could fall victim to the disease which has wiped out large swaths of olive trees in Puglia and reared its ugly head on the Spanish mainland, the British government has called for greater action to prevent the arrival and spread of Xylellafastidiosa in the UK.
Xylella has not yet been reported in the UK and it is unknown which plants are susceptible to the disease but experts have expressed particular concern over a strain of Xylella that is able to survive in cooler climates and could infect a range of hosts including Britain’s most common tree, the oak.
Read the article in full here
Continental controls needed to maintain fightback against tree diseases
Tighter controls on timber and plant movements into Europe are necessary to prevent further disastrous effects of plant diseases, a new study of the ash-dieback pathogen advises.
The call to action follows detailed investigations carried out in British woodlands into the population makeup of the Hymenoscyphusfraxineus fungus that causes ash dieback.
While the findings bring some hope for the future of ash tree populations in Great Britain and continental Europe, the authors warn that further introductions of variants of the fungus from its native East Asia must be prevented.
Professor James Brown from the John Innes Centre, one of the authors of the peer review paper in the journal Plant Pathology, said: "What this study shows is that once the ash dieback fungus arrived in Europe, it spread to Britain both by wind-borne spores and by trade in plants. Other alien diseases could spread in the same way. Because of this, disease control must operate on a European scale. Above all, we should prevent diseased plants getting into Europe."
Read the article in full here
Acorn Antics
Natural Resources Wales will be launching it’s annual ‘Acorn Antics’ campaign this October, inviting education groups from across Wales to collect acorns and connect with and learn about the fantastic natural environment right on their doorstep.
As well as issuing education groups with guidance on how to identify their oak tree and organise an acorn collection, suggested activities relating to seed dispersal and germination will also be shared with those taking part.
As many of our native tree species, like oak, have been affected by harmful pests and diseases over recent years the Acorn Antics campaign will ensure that young oak saplings planted on the Welsh Government estate in the future will be better suited to local conditions and have a better growth rate and resistance to disease.
NRW will pay education groups £4.10 a kilogram for oak acorns. Once collected, the acorns will be sent to the Forestry Commission nursery in Cheshire to be grown onto to saplings. They will return to Wales to be planted in woodlands and forests close to where they were picked as acorns.
The Acorn Antics 2017 campaign will go live on the 9th October with education groups being invited to drop their acorns off at their local NRW office between 16th October and 3rd November.
We ask for your help and support
To make the most of this mast year, we ask you to:
- Get in touch with us if you know of a particularly abundant tree with its location so we can alert the local education group
- If pertinent, give permission for local education groups to visit your organisation’s land, collect, remove and sell the acorns
- Support the campaign by sharing/liking our posts on social media -#acornantics @NatResWales
- Share this email with any education groups you work with or point them to the acorn antics webpage
Education Learning and Skills, Natural Resources Wales
Job opportunities
The following jobs are being advertised at the Woodland Trust. All of the roles are based at out Head Office in Grantham unless otherwise stated:
- Celebrity and Ambassador Programme Coordinator
- Woodland Outreach Manager – South West
- Site Manager – Herefordshire and Wye
- Recruiter
- Receptionist
- Corporate fundraiser
- Marketing and Communications Executive, land and influence
- Land and Property Manager – Smithills, Bolton
And finally . . .
Please send in any interesting stories, news articles or photos that I can include in the next update
Thanks
Helen
0343 7705692 / 07770 482939