News: February 2020

Tree diseases in forests: prevention is better than cure

New tree diseases are spreading to woodlands in Britain at an increasing rate causing greater damage to sustainable production of timber and the many other benefits that we get from our woods. This is a particular concern given the Government’s commitment to a rapid increase in the area of woodland. We don’t want to plant millions of trees that simply succumb to disease. Researchers in the Universities of Bangor, Strathclyde, Cambridge, Glasgow and Warwick, as well as the James Hutton Institute, have just published a full formal review of all the published evidence from around the temperate world about which options for forest management are most effective against tree diseases ( Frontiers of Forestry & Global Change 3:7. doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00007). This has shown that measures taken after a pathogen has invaded a forest (such as felling diseased trees or those susceptible to infection) may only slow the spread of disease within the forest. They rarely stop it. Therefore, much the best approach would be to increase effective quarantine to reduce the rate of spread of new pathogens to a country or region, but this rarely seems to work. The spores of many pathogens, such as that causing ash dieback disease, can travel far blown by the wind.

Publication date: 10 February 2020

ECB-funded Sports Science PhD awarded Best in the UK from the British Psychological Society

Cutting-edge PhD research by Leonie Webster has, not only been awarded Best PhD Thesis of 2019 from The British Psychological Society, already directly influenced and enhanced the training of professional coaches in the UK. The School of Sport Health and Exercise Sciences (SSHES) has forged a highly effective relationship with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for in excess of a decade. In fact, despite being based in Loughborough, when the ECB want assistance with talent development and psychology related matters, they call Bangor University.

Publication date: 4 February 2020