Researcher Spotlight - Celyn Bassett

Celyn is a researcher at Aberystwyth University with a background in ecology and a keen personal interest in woodlands. Celyn is working on the Oak Health project in partnership with Forest Research and the Sylva Foundation.

“The aim of the project is to enable landowners, woodland managers and citizen scientists to collect data from native oak trees to record their health and support practical management decisions. This will help build our understanding of trees predisposition to decline including Acute Oak Decline (AOD) where we hope to build a better understanding of the distribution and spread of this disease.”

Over the last year the team at Aberystwyth University have developed a web-app that allows users to collect 16 phenotypic measurements of health from native oaks. The data collected feeds in to predictive models that allow us to estimate the health of trees based on historical observations. My work has been primarily focused on testing this app in the field, and meeting with project members at their woodlands discuss what works and what we can do better.

New participants needed!

We plan to recruit new participants to the project ready for the summer season in 2026. 

The more trees we’re able to measure the better, so our focus over the next year is on increasing awareness and reaching people that can make the time commitment (around 5 minutes per tree) to measure some native oaks.

Can you help?

If you would like to volunteer, or know someone that can, you can find out more at https://www.actionoak.org/projects/title1-zh6pn or by emailing actionoak@rfs.org.uk