Ash: a Silent Extinction in the Woods | Wytham Woods

What do you do when the nature that surrounds you is inevitably, and slowly, dying? If you’re a researcher at Wytham Woods, you respond with devastation and practicality in equal measure. A ‘silent pandemic’, as described by Professor Yadvinder Malhi, ash dieback (hymenoscyphus fraxineus) has infected canopies of ash trees, not only in Wytham Woods, but across Western Europe since 2012. Cecilia Dahlsjö’s research is facing the loss head on – by running experiments which ask what the impact of this could look like in the immediate future, and the next decade and beyond. The dappled light and the soft leaves of these gentle giants are still savoured by the team at Wytham, even while science acknowledges their fate.

Video made by Angel Sharp Media http://www.angelsharp.com/
More from the Laboratory with Leaves video series: http://www.wythamwoods.ox.ac.uk/