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This week, across the UK, organisations are thanking volunteers past and present for their invaluable contributions. The week-long celebration starts on the first Monday in June every year and has been running for over forty years.
This is a movement with staying power, and it is incredible to read the stories of the longevity of so many volunteering programs.
The Carbon Community launched its volunteer program exactly five years ago, in June 2021. At the time, Covid rules were loosening a bit and being together outdoors became an exciting possibility again. With a picnic table, a second-hand sun umbrella, and plenty of hand sanitiser, we started recruiting for volunteers and crossed our fingers.
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Since then, we have been amazed and inspired by the commitment, energy, and impact of everyone who has joined in, contributing to climate science and caring for Glandwr Forest. As a way of saying thanks, we thought we would go back through the archives to highlight many of the memorable moments of what you, our volunteer community, have achieved.
Our volunteering journey began with the idea of creating a citizen science program where people could come together to make a personal contribution to environmental science by collecting data and helping maintain the Glandwr Forest Carbon Study.
This is a truly massive undertaking, and the world's largest field trial of its type with two kinds of forest, broadleaf and conifer, and two treatments, enhanced rock weathering and microbiome enrichment, each on its own and in combination.
Every test plot in the Glandwr Forest Carbon Study has 400 trees, and before we could begin measuring, we had to mark out the central 100 trees in 64 test plots. Nature does not follow graph paper, and not every plot is square, so our volunteers started by planning the space. Sometimes the central trees were a 10-by-10, sometimes a 5-by-20, and everything in between. Then came attaching the tags to the stakes and pounding the stakes into the ground. This (many volunteers told us) was by far the most satisfying and therapeutic task!
Once the 100 trees had each been marked with a tag, volunteers measured them using a ruler, callipers, and an app installed on their phones. It was a bit glitchy on some phones and took a bucketful of patience.
We were all learning together, and by October, we were ready for our first big group event. The Master’s students from the Geography Department at Swansea University were coming for fieldwork experience. To make things easier, we rented phones, pre-loaded the app, borrowed our neighbour’s barn for shelter, had a very long extension cord to power a kettle, and ordered lunch and flapjacks. We also trialled our first volunteer-supervisor model, in which expert volunteers helped teams of newcomers with questions. Where did these improvements come from? The great ideas of volunteers.
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Thank you to everyone who came out to help in 2021 – improvers, cheerleaders and constructive critics. It was a steep learning curve for us, and we received some tough but fair feedback that we needed to up our game and improve our facilities.
By March of 2022, our field station had electricity and a kettle, just in time for our first tree-planting events. (Running water came a few months later!)
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This year was also the start of what we now call our Carbon Study Spruce Up. In 2022, we checked tags, stakes, and corner posts, painted the colour-coded centre posts, and put fencing around 27 newly installed lysimeters to protect them from machinery and large wildlife.
And then there was the orange rope. Let’s call it volunteering meets CrossFit. When the study was laid out in 2021, each test plot was marked with corner posts, which are still in place. Before the trees were planted, orange rope was strung between the posts to mark exactly which trees and treatments belonged to which plot. By the spring of 2022, the string, buried under vegetation, needed to be removed. (If you know, you know.)
The Carbon Study Spruce Up continues today, although those who remember the orange rope are grateful that it’s gone.
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It takes a community coming together to achieve something monumental. Our Big Tree Measure each October is our flagship event with over 100 people coming together over nine days and contributing roughly 900 volunteering hours. Each day starts with coffee, tea, flapjacks and training, and then we are off in all weathers to spend time in nature and science.
“Volunteering at the Carbon Community is always such an overwhelmingly positive experience and a highlight of my week. Even when the weather is dreadful, the many positives - the community feeling, the tasty warm food, the stunning view of the viaduct, and (more than anything else) the satisfaction of literally watching trees grow and doing something that will have a long-term positive effect - massively outweigh the rain and wind. As always, I look forward to the next volunteering opportunity!”
Volunteer, Big Tree Measure 2025.
There have been many highlights over the years, including 2023, when we geopositioned each tree as part of a research program on monitoring, reporting, and verification. The mapping from this project has been invaluable, and is especially helpful when we need to locate a specific tree.
2025 marked our fifth year of measuring these special science trees. With three measurements per tree and 6,400 trees, that is close to 100,000 measurements over the last five years. All this is powered by our volunteers, volunteer supervisors, our supporters and the amazing places in Llandovery where we source food and flapjacks! One cannot measure trees on an empty stomach.
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As the forest has evolved so has the volunteering program. Over time, people have joined us to plant trees, plant hedgerows, lay hedges, clear footpaths, remove tree shelters, collect soil samples, write articles, fundraise, and more.
We have also added educational opportunities, meadow walks and tree walks, and hope to add more. (Lichen and fungi are a top request.)
On behalf of everyone from The Carbon Community, thank you to all our volunteers.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your energy.
Thank you for your encouragement.
Thank you for taking action for the environment and the future.
Sign up to hear about the latest opportunities or drop us a note (info@carboncommunity.org) and let us know your superpower.
Read 'A day in the life of a Carbon Community volunteer'
Learn more about Volunteers' Week here.
