The City of London Corporation manages a nationally significant portfolio of open spaces including Epping Forest, Burnham Beeches, Hampstead Heath, Queen’s Park, West Ham Park, Copped Hall and Patmore’s Field. Through its Carbon Removals Programme, the Corporation is investing in habitat restoration, meadow creation, soil improvement initiatives and woodland resilience measures to support climate mitigation, biodiversity recovery and ecosystem resilience.
Land management practices influence soil microbiology and chemistry, which in turn regulate carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and tree resilience. By understanding these relationships, it is possible to design management interventions that simultaneously enhance carbon storage, biodiversity recovery and ecosystem resilience. However, there remains a significant evidence gap regarding which site-specific land management interventions most effectively improve soil condition, increase carbon sequestration and strengthen ecosystem resilience.
Research Aim
To develop evidence-based land management recommendations that maximise soil carbon sequestration, enhance soil biodiversity, and improve tree resilience across a diverse network of restored meadows, urban parks, wood pasture and forest landscapes. We would like to answer following questions:
This project is a CENTA Flagship Project.
This project offers a CASE studentship
Each host has a slightly different application process.
Find out how to apply for this studentship.
All applications must include the CENTA application form.
Choose your application route
Analysis of existing land management strategies and carbon sequestration potential. We will collect soil and tree samples from selected parks, meadows, forests to measure the concentrations of nutrients and biomass. To assess the impact of new land management applications, we will select suitable land and apply experiments with compost tea, plant trees, apply nutrients etc. We will measure the chemical concentrations using gas and ion chromatography.
Diversity and metabolism of the microbial communities in soil and tree ecosytems. We will employ DNA and RNA-based tools (amplicon sequencing, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics) to characterise the microbial community and metabolic pathways in soil and tree samples (e.g. root, leaf etc). We will analyse the changes in the diversity of beneficial microbes, their metabolic pathways and impact on carbon sequestration and soil health.
Overall analysis: We will assess all data and develop practical strategies for land management to increase soil and tree health while increasing carbon sequestration.
DRs will be awarded CENTA Training Credits (CTCs) for participation in CENTA-provided and ‘free choice’ external training. One CTC can be earned per 3 hours training, and DRs must accrue 100 CTCs across the three and a half years of their PhD.
The DR will receive comprehensive training across a range of technical skills. Initially, they will be trained in field sampling techniques, including the collection of soil samples. Following this, they will develop analytical expertise, mainly how to use ion and liquid chromatography to quantify key chemicals and nutrient (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus, total carbon ). The training will also encompass statistical analysis and microbial ecology techniques focusing advanced DNA and RNA-based tools as well as the associated bioinformatics pipelines to analyse amplicon sequencing, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics datasets.
The City of London developed the Climate Action Strategy, which has a Carbon Removals and Land Management project to help protect the existing carbon stored by open spaces (11000 acres) and to increase their carbon sequestration capacity. These open spaces currently remove over 16000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year. Land management practices help protect these areas and increase carbon removal by these lands.
Selected sites (Copped Hall, Epping Forest, Patmore’s Field etc) are undergoing through habitat-creatin projects (e.g. converting to meadow) or land management strategies (e.g. application of compost tea).
Monitoring these sites in terms of soil and tree health will help better manage these ecosystems and devise best strategies to increase the carbon sequestration capacity.
Year 1:
Year 2:
Year 3:
For any enquiries related to this project please contact Ozge Eyice, [email protected].
To apply to this project:
Applications must be submitted by 23:59 GMT on Wednesday 6th January 2027.