Oxford helps plant ‘Ghost Forest’
19 Nov 09
Engineers and scientists from Oxford University have helped artist Angela Palmer create the ‘Ghost Forest’ exhibit currently on display in Trafalgar Square, that will then be shipped to the Copenhagen Climate Change summit next month.
Ghost Forest, which features the stumps of 10 rainforest trees from Ghana, is designed to highlight the issue of deforestation. Angela Palmer, an alumna of Exeter College Oxford and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, who created the exhibit, said: ‘The concept is to present a series of rainforest tree stumps as a 'ghost forest' - using the negative space created by the missing trunks as a metaphor for climate change, the absence representing the removal of the world's 'lungs' through continued deforestation.’
Dr Yiannis Ventikos and Mr Bob Scott, from Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science, were involved early on, discussing the feasibility and logistics of the operation with Angela Palmer. Dr Ventikos and Mr Scott made a first evaluation of weights and support options based on reports for the trees' dimensions, as measured by local crews in Suhuma forest reserve in western Ghana.
Dr Ventikos said: ‘We had a memorable visit to Tilbury Docks where the trees arrived in the UK and were meticulously photographed and measured. Combining this information with their weights, as reported by the shipping lists, allowed us to define the trees' footprints and the support required for their safe display: quite a challenge with some of the stumps weighing in at 20 tonnes!’
The team chose a simple solution for supporting the stumps using industrial grade modular platforms. Before the heavy trees were put in place Angela Palmer and Bob Scott examined various arrangements virtually, on a Computer Aided Design representation of Trafalgar Square, to see how best to position them to suit the unusual venue. On the night of 15 November the trees arrived in Trafalgar Square and Dr Ventikos surveyed the installation and positioning of the trees and celebrated with the rest of the crew when a giant crane lowered them successfully onto their plinths.
Professor Yadvinder Mahli from Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, chair of the new Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests and a world authority on tropical rainforests, also worked closely with Angela Palmer, advising her on some of the issues involved and helping her to arrange for the trees to be transported out of Ghana.
Professor Mahli is currently in Ghana working with local researchers and NASA to collate data to build a carbon map of Ghana's ecosystems, to support carbon storage and biodiversity conservation efforts. He is also working with local organisations to set up REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) demonstration projects at four sites across Ghana.
REDD is one of the key programmes to be discussed at the Copenhagen Climate Change summit in December and could result in a global market worth billions. However, it will need to be certified and underpinned by scientific understanding of tropical forest carbon dynamics, an area in which Professor Malhi and his team are acknowledged leaders.
Dr William Hawthorne of Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences, who has spent over 20 years working in the rainforests of Ghana and elsewhere in the tropics, was also able to advise Angela Palmer. He co-wrote a conservation strategy for Ghana’s forests and has studied the regeneration of the forests after logging and fire – important considerations for both Carbon sequestration and biodiversity initiatives.
He was able to offer advice on Ghana’s forestry management system, which is generally regarded as better than that for many rainforest areas, and wrote a field guide for Ghanaian plants that Angela used to inform her work. Dr Hawthorne is currently involved in a project to pinpoint and publicise areas of the planet that have the greatest concentration of rare and threatened plants – so-called biodiversity 'hotspots' – supported by the InterContinental Hotels Group.
Ghost Forest is on display in Trafalgar Square until 22 November and then in Thorvaldsens Plads, Copenhagen, Denmark 7-18 December.