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Cuckoo Tors Baseline Soil Sampling – OCIS Project 2024

By Joshua Phillips

This year, I got the opportunity of working on an OCIS (On Campus Internship Scheme) project through the University. I was tasked with understanding the soil carbon of the Cuckoo Tors site near Buxton. Following a visit to the site, I drafted a plan and organised a sequence of sample locations. Soil samples were then collected at two different depths where possible – in some places, the soil was not deep enough to dig all the way down. These samples were then prepared in the lab by drying, crushing, and sieving. When ready, all were subsequently weighed and placed into the furnace at over 400°C for 2 hours. The principle behind this is to calculate the percentage of weight lost during the burning, and hence calculate the organic carbon stored in different parts of the soil. The results of this project will be useful as a baseline of the site. After several years of rewilding, hopefully improvements to the carbon store can be measured. It is important to see how nature restoration and climate change mitigation can go hand in hand.

Cuckoo Tors site visit

Prepared soil samples

Burnt samples in crucibles

Map of the results

A New Site…

Cuckoo Tors is an important site for the University of Derby’s research into regenerative management.

There is currently a lot of interest in managing land in a more sustainable way, and terms such as ‘rewilding’ are now widely used. Here at the University of Derby, we want to understand how managing areas of land in different ways can affect things like the carbon held in the soil, the way water flows across the surface, and the biodiversity of flora and fauna.

We believe it’s important to involve the local community, visitors, and students in what we’re doing at our research sites. This website will allow us to keep everyone updated on our progress at Cuckoo Tors. You can expect blog posts about our research at the site, updates on how the area is changing, and opportunities for everyone to get involved!