One, two ... tree!

Children from primary schools around Middleton helped LEAF scientists to collect data about the trees in Middleton Park as part of the annual Schools Heritage Day.

The event, organised by the Friends of Middleton Park (FoMP) community group provides the opportunity for Year 6 children to get out of the classroom for a day and take part in a range of activities including flowerbed design, charcoal making, looking for mini-beasts and crown green bowling.

This year saw a new tree-measuring activity hosted by researchers and students from LEAF, together with a local charity, the United Bank of Carbon (UBoC). As part of this activity, the children identified trees within a section of the park, and learned about why trees are important for the local environment as well as the climate. The children were taught how to take basic measurements of the trees and learned about why this information is important for scientists.

"It was great to see how much the children enjoyed spending the day outdoors, despite some gloomy weather! They were all really interested in how the trees in their local park were helping to fight climate change" said Dr Cat Scott, an atmospheric scientist in the School of Earth and Environment, "they were also far quicker than us at working out the answers to the maths we needed to do!"