Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
Forest Lab started as a simple idea; ‘wouldn’t it be good if myForest users could help researchers?’ This soon prompted a follow-up question; ‘how can researchers help myForest users with issues impacting their forests?’ This two-way exchange is the foundation of what has become Forest Lab.” For woodland holdings over 3ha, you can develop a plan using the Forestry Commission’s full Woodland Plan template, the Plan of Operations template, and your own maps. A grant is available to help fund the production of a woodland plan (Countryside Stewardship option PA3), where the full Forestry Commission template is used. Working across the wider Northeast and Yorkshire area, Northwoods currently hosts the Northwoods Innovation Programme funded by the Forestry Commission through the Woods into Management Forestry Innovation Funds (WiMFIF), part of the UK Government's Nature for Climate Fund. The Northwoods Innovation Programme has been established to accelerate innovative approaches and technology which improve the number and quality of woodlands in active management. As part of the Innovation Programme, Northwoods organises and hosts a wide range of events, including webinars and in person demonstration events, that communicate innovative ideas and tools to stakeholders that own or are involved in the management of woodlands.
myForest offers data layers which cover Great Britain, as well as offering layers specific to England, Scotland, and Wales. These layers vary in uses from those which may be specific to forest creation or management, to generic layers useful in all cases. The Woodland Management Focus Area Pilot is developing a methodology to locate currently unmanaged woodlands which have the lowest barriers to management with the aim to engage woodland owners and ultimately bring more woodlands into management. Features are an important part of any forest creation or management plan, ensuring each feature is mapped accurately is vital to developing an effective maps and plans which are appropriate for any range of desired activities. For non-FC woodland plan templates that don’t match the Forestry Commission’s woodland plan template in structure or composition, use this cover sheet ( MS Word Document, 36.5 KB) that states the UKFS criteria being assessed and provides a consistent framework for the Forestry Commission to review the plan. Non-FC woodland plan templates are not eligible for funding to prepare a woodland management plan through Countryside Stewardship.Firstly, the Focus Area Pilot is developing a methodology that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyse hurdles (such as slope, access, and proximity to markets) to the active management of woodlands. The methodology uses the Forestry Commission’s Managed Woodland Headline Performance Indicator dataset to identify unmanaged woodlands. Sweet Chestnut is a durable, straight growth, dimensionally stable timber well suited to use in buildings. However, very little UK grown sweet chestnut is used in construction. The majority is converted into fencing or burnt as biomass. If you want to create a woodland plan, you should include all woodland on your property. How to produce your plan The main outputs of the project will be the building and testing of a new IT platform to support stakeholders with mapping tools, and links to other decision support tools. We will also be developing a woodland creation plan. Following the devastating impacts of Storm Arwen, the second webinar 'An Introduction to Management Planning' was rearranged to allow us to answer queries regarding the impacts of Storm Arwen on woodland management along with guests from the Forestry Commission and Euro Forest. Further information on the remaining webinars can be found here: FREE Woods into Management Webinars – RDI Associates (ruraldevelopment.org.uk) Slide from webinar 1: Sustainable Woodland Management - how and why do woodlands benefit
The HomeGrownHouse (HGH) research project challenges this status quo by exploring new, value-added uses for coppiced sweet chestnut in buildings in the SE of England, where the highest number of new-start building projects sit alongside the most abundant coppiced sweet chestnut. Yet the opportunities this presents for sustainable local timber use are being missed. The ClimateMatch tool provides a visualisation of regions with a similar climate to the climate projection for any location in Europe, and so gives an indication of the climate that trees are likely to experience in the future. The tool can also show how a climatic niche will shift under future climate conditions. Information about the tool is available from Forest Research and B4EST. You can find the tool in the myForest Platform, a focused GIS software allowing woodland owners and managers to map, plan, and manage their woodlands. myForest • home (sylva.org.uk) Screenshot of the myForest Woodland Assessora plan submission proforma ( MS Word Document, 16.3 KB) if you’re receiving funding from the Countryside Stewardship scheme Each question is matched to ecosystem services (e.g. carbon storage, habitat provision, flood alleviation, products and other public benefits) that each of the specified management actions are deemed to enhance. In designing and building myForest for Education, we consulted closely with more than 100 Forest School Leaders, environmental educators and teachers who participated in early trials and contributed ideas.’ (Sylva Foundation) For each Sub-compartment, select Edit Management Data and complete the Felling tab (see below). Refer to guidance in sections 6 - 8 of the Felling Licence Online User Guide for more information. Climate Risk Indicators is a free online tool to visualise UK climate change data, including average, minimum and maximum temperatures, rainfall, and temperature extremes. It provides indicators of risk including for wildfire, agriculture, river levels, and transport. Information and a How to Guide are included within the Tool and through the Climate Resilience Programme.
The UK imports 80% of its wood products and only 59% of UK woodlands are under active management. Many formerly coppiced woodlands have fallen out of regular harvest cycles, are more prone to diseases and pests, and contain a mixture of small, medium and large diameter trees with few markets. Creating a woodland management plan can demonstrate sustainable forest management and it supports the planning and implementation of work proposals and their long term monitoring. Forest Lab is a project within myForest which enables landowners and scientists to exchange information about woodlands. When coppiced, sweet chestnut re-grows multiple, straight lengths of roundwood from each ‘stool’. Coppicing is also naturally regenerative and harvesting in this way encourages higher levels of biodiversity than other monoculture woodlands. Coppice forestry also creates skilled rural jobs. By linking forestry practices, ecology and construction, the HGH project has forged new connections that contribute to a holistic, sustainable and local timber supply chain.Forest Lab is built within myForest, a woodland creation and management platform designed and run by Sylva Foundation. Embedding Forest Lab within myForest means that all users of the platform can get involved simply, and they are able to share any data they want from their existing maps and plans. Responsive design, which means it fits the size of the screen you are using, making it easy to use with tablets and laptops. Here we take a look at two of those projects in more detail. These studies were written by collaborators on the projects. HomeGrownHouse - Grown in Britain myForest is the flagship project of Sylva Foundation, an environmental and forestry charity providing innovative solutions to some of the greatest environmental challenges to modern society.
Sylva Foundation and Forest Research are working in partnership to deliver Forest Lab, enabling myForest users to collect and share data from their woodlands to help support research. myForest users are responsible for about 9% of woodland area across the UK, therefore collectively are able to represent a wide range of woodland types, and to explore many different issues, at thousands of different locations across the country. We hope that as a result we will create a unique and powerful tool to capture important information and data about environmental change. How to take part? Currently there are three live Forest Lab projects covering resilience, wildfire and tree growth, with plans to offer more in the future: Forest Lab has been designed to support specific projects conducted to explore a range of specific subjects, from forest health to tree growth, while the data overall will support the National Forest Inventory.
HomeGrownHouse - Grown in Britain
There are five levels from entry through to gold, as your score improves, you will move through these levels and eventually become Grown in Britain (GiB) audit ready. In the first year (2020) we are engaging with stakeholders within the Northern Forest, to co-design and then assess a range of innovative methods to provide greater knowledge and improved management of woodland creation for a wide range of stakeholders at different holding scales and across different landscapes. At the end of March we held an interactive online workshop with 27 stakeholders to start the co-design process. Submit your draft woodland management plan to the administrative hub covering your area. Make sure you include: After five successful years, the myForest Deer Manager project has come to a close. It was a difficult decision to discontinue it, but as a small charity we have to ensure we are focused on where we can make the most impact.
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