Field facilities

Henfaes Research Centre is the school’s excellent field facility, located about 7 miles from Bangor and is 252 hectares in size. It offers unrivalled opportunities to study diverse environments from sea-level to amongst the highest land in Snowdonia, all on one farm.

It provides facilities for research and teaching in environmental science, agriculture (including arable crops and livestock grazing), forestry, hydrology, and conservation. It also has an extensive shoreline for studying coastal salt marsh processes.

Current work are sponsored by a wide range of funders, including Welsh Government, DEFRA, BBSRC, NERC, European Union and industry. We attract staff, students, and projects from all over the world to Henfaes.

Henfaes represents one of Defra’s key sustainable intensification platform (SIP) sites, where the potential to increase livestock production whilst also reducing greenhouse gas emissions is being explored. It is also a site that is part of the Global Farm Platform.

Henfaes is also an Innovation Centre for LEAF and an Innovation Site for the Welsh Government's Farming Connect programme.

Henfaes is also a key part of the Sir William Roberts Centre for Sustainable Land Use.

Research facilities at Henfaes

Facilities at Henfaes include:

• Two modern laboratories with associated equipment for sample preparation and some on-site analyses
• Computer-controlled glasshouse facilities (including a 24-tank lysimeter)

• Growth rooms
• An automatic weather station with telemetry data transfer
• COSMOS-UK network for monitoring soil moisture
• Long-term pasture, crop, agroforestry, forestry and soil science experimental work covering 40 ha
• 16 solardomes (managed by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology), currently being used for ozone related work
• Meeting rooms and offices
• Demonstration crop plots, often with industry for commercial research and demonstration events
• Ash provenance trial

Teaching at Henfaes

Teaching activities include sampling and data collection exercises at undergraduate level and student-led project work at undergraduate, taught-postgraduate and postgraduate-research levels.

Centre for Hill and Upland Management (CHUM)

The Centre for Hill and Upland Management (CHUM) is based at Henfaes, which is managed as a commercial sheep unit with 1,650 pure bred Welsh Mountain ewes, cattle, and pedigree (Section A) Welsh Mountain ponies.

CHUM’s objective is to undertake commercial agricultural activities with best environmental practice, whilst returning a viable profit. A significant proportion of the upland landholding has protected area status under UK legislation (Site of Special Scientific Interest, National Nature Reserve) and under the EU Habitats Directive (Special Area of Conservation). Consequently, the upland area has been managed since 2000 under the terms of the higher-level agri-environment schemes in Wales. This provides opportunities to study how changes in management can have environmental and economic impacts for farm systems.

CHUM contains a range of grassland types as well as coniferous and deciduous forest blocks; as well as an extensive, long-running agroforestry experiment. We also have access to the high mountain above CHUM for undertaking research on peats and heathlands.

We are a member of the Aber and Llanfairfechan Common Graziers Association, with grazing rights for the common land areas of the Carneddau mountain range (owned by the National Trust). The common contains sensitive montane (above the treeline) habitats and species of UK and European conservation interest.

Aerial footage of Henfaes Research Centre, Abergwyngregyn.