Sarah Grace Jongkind
- The Open University
- Long-term ecosystem responses with natural woodland restoration on retired grazing land
- Dr Kadmiel Maseyk; Dr Philip Wheeler; Dr Clare Lawson; Dr Hannah West (External)
This PhD researches ecosystem recovery of abandoned sheep grazing land in Exmoor National Park. Grazing was excluded from the land in 1972 and has been free from human intervention since. My project will examine how this exclusion has allowed woodland to return, and how ecosystem functioning, particularly biodiversity and soil biogeochemistry, compares to ancient woodland and continually grazed land. This research will provide insight into the potential for passive ecosystem restoration in the UK and contributes to the ongoing rewilding debate taking place.
I undertook my BSc in Environmental Biology at the University of Nottingham and enjoyed it so much that I wanted to pursue postgraduate study. I moved to the Netherlands to study a MSc in Forest and Nature Conservation with a specialisation in management at Wageningen University & Research. During my time at Wageningen, I had the opportunity to research tropical forest recovery on abandoned pastureland in Australia – the tropical equivalent of my PhD!
The process of research is a challenging but highly rewarding one. I love learning, project management and problem solving – three core components to research. Contributing to our scientific understanding of the environment, specifically ecological consequences of human management, has always been of interest to me.
Training researchers up in a variety of skills is central to the CENTA programme, so there are many opportunities to learn. For this PhD project, I also benefit from a CASE partnership – a non-academic partner organisation which helps support the research and allows me to spend time at the organisation’s workplace, further strengthening the experience gained during the PhD.
Having such a multidisciplinary environment helps strengthen critical thinking skills and encourages a broad range of approaches to environmental research and its applications. Longer term, I hope to go into environmental management – though the path there is likely to be varied with both research and application.
