Scientists from the University of Stirling and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee have released a research paper which details the impact the great drought of 1976 had on trees in Great Britain.
1976 was also the year which saw plagues of ladybirds, a Drought Bill, and cries for us all to save water by bathing with a friend.
Their findings, published in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, found that the drought caused permanent changes to our forests.
The study looked at Lady Park Wood in the Wye Valley, a 45-hectare National Nature Reserve on the border of England and Wales. Drawing on regular forest surveys going back almost 70 years, Stirling Professor Alistair Jump and his team looked at how relative abundance of beech and sessile oak changed between 1945 and 2010. They also examined tree ring data to discover how growth rates of the two species altered over the same period.
Read full article: Great drought of 1976 left a lasting legacy for Britain's trees
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