Wytham Woods

Abstract The woods and farmland of the 1000 ha Wytham Estate in the middle of England were left to the University of Oxford in 1942. Since then, the Estate has been the subject of an immense amount of research, by pioneers in ecology such as Charles Elton through to the current crop of DPhil students, using methods that were and still are at the cutting edge of their fields—from early use of radioactive tracers to satellite-based remote sensing. This book focusses on the recent studies, including the carbon balance, forest dynamics, grassland restoration, and links to conservation elsewhere in Britain. It also has syntheses of long-term work on badgers and great tits and describes the archaeology and history of the Estate in more detail than previously. The efforts to open up the woods through involvement of the public in citizen-science projects, more school visits, and interpretation through art and artists are illustrated. These different strands are brought together to show how the landscape as a whole works. The Wytham Estate is in many ways ‘an ordinary piece of countryside’: lessons from what has been learnt here can be applied more widely both in the Britain and across the world.