Table Of ContentWoodland Survey Handbook
Woodland Survey Handbook
Collecting Data for Conservation in
British Woodland
K.J. Kirby
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road,
Oxford OX1 3RB, UK
J.E. Hall
Scottish Natural Heritage, Great Glen House, Leachkin Road,
Inverness IV3 8NW, UK
Pelagic Publishing | www.pelagicpublishing.com
Published by Pelagic Publishing
www.pelagicpublishing.com
PO Box 874, Exeter, EX3 9BR, UK
www.pelagicpublishing.com
Woodland Survey Handbook
ISBN 978-1-78427-184-8 Paperback
ISBN 978-1-78427-185-5 ePub
ISBN 978-1-78427-186-2 PDF
© Keith Kirby and Jeanette Hall 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
All rights reserved. Apart from short excerpts for use in research or for reviews, no
part of this document may be printed or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, now known or hereafter invented or otherwise without prior permission from
the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover photographs:
Top: Keepscombe Wood, near Looe in Cornwall (Adam Burton Photography,
www.adamburtonphotography.com)
Lower left to right: Recently-cut coppice, Roudsea Wood, Cumbria (Keith Kirby); Data
logging in the field (Ben Ditchburn, Forestry Commission); and Recording vegetation
quadrats, Wytham Woods (Keith Kirby)
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Background to nature conservation surveys 2
2.1 Introduction 2
2.2 Why do we need nature conservation surveys? 3
2.3 Curating your data 5
2.4 Standardisation, survey accuracy and the value of ‘unplanned surveys’ 5
3 Landscape-scale assessment: putting sites into their wider context 8
3.1 The overall woodland resource 8
3.1.1 Past woodland cover 9
3.2 Woods in their spatial and temporal contexts 10
3.3 Landscape character assessments 11
3.4 Other historical accounts and papers 12
3.5 Conservation designations, agri-environment schemes and surveys 13
3.6 Ancient woodland inventories 13
3.7 Species distributions 13
3.8 Pressures and threats 14
3.9 Collation and analysis of landscape-level surveys 16
4 Site assessment surveys 18
4.1 Introduction 18
4.2 Why focus on recording vascular plant species and structure? 19
4.3 Accessing past surveys 20
vi | Woodland Survey Handbook
5 A basic walkabout survey 21
5.1 Things to consider before you start 21
5.2 Outputs of a walkabout survey 21
5.3 Planning and mapping a route 22
5.3.1 Precision on the map and in the field 27
5.4 Recording plants on walkabouts 28
5.4.1 Recording species abundance 28
5.4.2 Sources of variation in the species recorded 30
5.4.3 Interpreting the species list 31
5.5 Describing woodland structure 33
5.6 Subsidiary habitats within woodland 40
5.7 Surrounding land 44
5.8 Vegetation maps from walkabout surveys 44
5.9 Management 45
5.10 Initial write-up 50
6 Going beyond the walkabout: more detailed surveys 53
6.1 Quadrat recording in woodland for flora/vegetation 53
6.1.1 Size of quadrat 55
6.1.2 Quadrat distribution 56
6.2 Woodland classification 57
6.2.1 Classification systems for British woods 58
6.2.2 The National Vegetation Classification 59
6.2.3 Other woodland classifications and their interrelationships 61
6.3 Recording woodland structure 62
6.4 Dead-wood surveys 65
6.5 Veteran tree and parkland surveys 69
6.6 Grazing and browsing 70
6.7 Woodland archaeology and soil surface features 70
6.8 Soils 74
6.9 Biomass and energy flows 76
7 Surveys for species groups other than vascular plants 77
7.1 Mammals 77
7.2 Woodland birds 79
7.3 Reptiles and amphibians 81
Contents | vii
7.4 Bryophytes 82
7.5 Lichens 83
7.6 Invertebrates 84
7.7 Fungi 90
8 Long-term surveillance to detect change 91
8.1 Introduction 91
8.2 Landscape-scale change 92
8.3 Condition monitoring on designated sites 93
8.4 Use of permanent plots and transects to assess change in woodland stand
structure and composition 95
8.4.1 Semi-permanent plots 96
8.4.2 Other types of permanent/semi-permanent record 96
8.4.3 Making ‘permanent plot studies’ permanent in practice 96
9 Conclusion 98
Appendix 1: Example of a completed walkabout record card 99
Appendix 2: Stand Group key 103
Appendix 3: National Vegetation Classification: English key 104
Appendix 4: Annex I: Woodland types recognised in the UK 113
References 114
Index 135
Acknowledgements
The original handbook was produced by the Nature Conservancy Council and we are
grateful to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee for permission to draw on that
volume. The Department of Plant Sciences in Oxford provided the congenial space
to carry out the work. Various individuals commented on and contributed to different
sections of this revision, including Phil Baarda, Marc Bruard, Ben Ditchburn, Elsa Field,
Rob Fuller, Phil Grice, Jeanette Hall, David Heaver, John Henson-Webb, Mark Lawrence,
Simon Leather, Dani Linton, Iain MacGowan, Tony Mitchell-Jones, Emily Warner and Ray
Woods. Our thanks to them and apologies for any errors, misinterpretations and wild
speculations that have been inadvertently added to their comments.
The photographs, unless otherwise stated, are by Keith Kirby, but we acknowledge the
following contributions to figures and images:
The map from Charles Elton’s diaries (Box 2.1) is reproduced courtesy of the Department
of Zoology, University of Oxford. The following are produced with permission from the
Forestry Commission: Figure 3.1, based on data from the National Forest Inventory (©
Crown copyright); Figure 3.2, based on the 1947 census of woodland and trees, now held
in the National Archives; images of data logging in the field (Box 5.5); Table 6.5, redrawn
from Bulletin 124 (Pyatt et al. 2001). Google Earth images provide the backdrops for
Figures 3.3b and 5.1. Figure 3.5 is based on data collected for the Atlas of the Flora of Britain
and Ireland (© BSBI) reproduced by permission from the Botanical Society of Britain and
Ireland. Natural Resources Wales produced the network maps used in Figure 3.6. Figure
5.3a is reproduced, courtesy of JNCC, from Warren and Fuller (1993). The Wytham canopy
photograph in Figure 6.8a was provided by Professor Yadvinder Malhi, University of
Oxford. Support for the data collection underlying Figure 6.8b is acknowledged from the
Metrology for Earth Observation and Climate project (MetEOC-2), grant number ENV55
within the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP). The EMRP is jointly
funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union;
NPL; the NERC National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) and UCL. Figure 7.1 was
provided by Danielle Linton. Figure 7.2 was provided by Professor Robert Fuller (BTO).
The image in Box 7.2d is reproduced with permission from the Department of Zoology,
University of Oxford.
Preface
During the 1980s, much conservation effort was put into
woodland surveys (Appendix 1) and this experience was
brought together by the Nature Conservancy Council in ‘A
woodland survey handbook’ (Kirby 1988). The emphasis
was on botanical field surveys because these were the main
method used to describe and evaluate sites as potential Sites of
Special Scientific Interest or as Wildlife Trust reserves.
The Handbook became part of the Joint Nature
Conservation Committee’s suite of publications, as the
conservation institutions devolved and merged. The survey
landscape has also changed. Much survey work is done
by consultancies rather than directly by the government
agencies. Citizen-science projects are increasingly being used
to collect data. Remote sensing has come of age and replaced
field walking (and fieldwork generally). The internet has
made it possible to access data easily across a range of sources, which can then be collated
using Geographic Information Systems in ways that were barely conceivable 30 years ago.
Computers no longer fill whole rooms but sit on everyone’s desk and in their cars. Mobile
phone apps are taking the place of bulky field identification guides; direct recording to
data-loggers in the field is replacing clipboard and paper.
Nonetheless, we think that there is still a place for a rewritten version of the survey
handbook, incorporating insights on woodland that have accumulated since the 1988
original. The work has benefited from inputs from current conservation agency staff and a
range of others who scrutinised different sections, but the responsibility for any errors that
slipped through in the final editing lies firmly with me.
Keith Kirby
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford
