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The OpenLiving Lab is located across multiple natural sites on the OU’s Milton Keynes campus. The initiative focuses on studying urban ecosystems while supporting restoration projects, including a riverside woodland and a floodplain meadow and is a pioneering “living science laboratory” designed to help the public explore biodiversity and environmental conditions in urban settings. Lab development has involved planting 350 trees along the riverbank to boost biodiversity and support long-term growth monitoring research. Cameras and sensors across the site enable researchers to collect data, helping scientists track changes across the ecosystem. Follow the links below to try some of our activities:
Researchers have installed 10 camera traps in the Lab, capturing footage of animals day and night. Since 2023 these cameras have gathered extensive video data offering new insights into urban wildlife behaviour. Camera footage is being uploaded to the urban wildlife viewer where users can filter results by date, location and species to observe animals in their natural habitats.
The weather station activity gives users access to measurements of several meteorological and soil parameters at the riparian and urban woodland sites using automatic sensors. The data for a range of time periods can be viewed and downloaded for analysis.
For more details about Open University courses in Environmental Science see here.
