Our ancient woodlands have fuelled the imagination of generations, becoming important culturally as well as ecologically as one of the country’s most biodiverse and irreplaceable habitats. In England ancient woodland is defined as land that has been continuously wooded since 1600 AD. Old management techniques like coppicing with standards have created diverse shrub layers and distinctive communities of flora and fauna, many of which are rare and specialist. In 2022 DERC began work on updating the Ancient Woodland Inventory for the county of Dorset, now, just over two years later the work is completed and will soon be published and available as an open dataset.
Britain is one of the least wooded countries in Europe with only 13.2% of woodland cover, and only 2.5% of the land cover ancient woodland. Ancient woodlands make a significant contribution to addressing Climate Change, as despite making up only a small proportion of the woodland cover they hold 36% of the total carbon sequestered by woodland in the country (Woodland Trust 2021).
The AWI Update project is a national initiative, set up by partners including Natural England and the Woodland Trust, to address gaps in the current dataset. The new AWI will provide a valuable reference tool informing the planning process and nature conservation, capturing the extent of ancient woodland cover in the county. Dorset is a county with many small and fragmented woodlands and for the first time smaller ancient woodland sites (0.25-2ha) are to be included within the inventory increasing the protection of this irreplaceable habitat.
The update process began with a desk study in which 19th century OS maps were compared with present day aerial photography to identify and map a dataset of long established woodlands. These woodlands were then further investigated, checking for their presence on multiple historical maps, tithe maps and apportionments, manorial records and surveys. Also incorporated into the evidence base were historic and recent biological data, historic landscape character surveys and data from the Ancient Tree Inventory. Field surveys have been undertaken at candidate sites to identify botanical and archaeological features as supporting evidence for classifying woodlands as ancient in origin.
The provisional results from the updated Ancient Woodland Inventory show an increase in recorded ancient woodland cover in Dorset. Many smaller sites have now been incorporated and will be afforded the protection of ancient woodland status. The infographic below shows all the woodland cover in the county and highlights how few of our woodlands are ancient.
The research has also generated a dataset of long-established woodland. This dataset identifies those woodlands which, although not ancient, are potentially of a higher biological and ecological value than more recent woodland.
The current inventory for Dorset can be viewed on Dorset Explorer and current datasets and information on the current inventory and the update process can be found on the government’s website.
Completing the project in the allocated timeframe would not have been possible without the help and support of the staff at the Dorset History Centre and our wonderful team of volunteer field surveyors, to whom we owe a big thank you!
Reference
Reid, C., Hornigold, K., McHenry, E., Nichols, C., Townsend, M., Lewthwaite, K., Elliot, M., Pullinger, R., Hotchkiss, A., Gilmartin, E., White, I., Chesshire, H., Whittle, L., Garforth, J., Gosling, R., Reed, T. and Hugi, M. (2021). State of the UK’s Woods and Trees 2021. Woodland Trust.
Dorset Environmental Records Centre 