Woodland survey of Great Britain 1971–2001

Abstract

Abstract. The Woodland Survey of Great Britain is a unique dataset, consisting of a detailed range of ecological measurements at a national scale, covering a time span of 30 years. A set of 103 woods spread across Britain were first surveyed in 1971, which were again surveyed in 2000–2003 (for convenience referred to subsequently as the "2001 survey"). Standardised methods of describing the trees, shrubs, ground flora, soils and general habitats present were used for both sets of surveys. The sample of 1648 plots spread through 103 woodland sites located across Britain makes it probably the most extensive quantitative ecological woodland survey undertaken in Britain; it is also notable for the range of sites that have been re-visited after such a long interval. The dataset provides a unique opportunity to explore the effects of a range of potential drivers of woodland change that operated between 1971 and 2001. The dataset is available in four discrete parts, which have been assigned the following DOIs: doi:10.5285/4d93f9ac-68e3-49cf-8a41-4d02a7ead81a (Woodlands survey tree diameter data 1971–2001), doi:10.5285/d6409d40-58fe-4fa7-b7c8-71a105b965b4 (Woodlands survey site information 1971–2001), doi:10.5285/fb1e474d-456b-42a9-9a10-a02c35af10d2 (Woodlands survey soil data 1971–2001), doi:10.5285/2d023ce9-6dbe-4b4f-a0cd-34768e1455ae (Woodlands survey flora data 1971–2001).

Mycorrhizal type of woody plants influences understory species richness in British broadleaved woodlands

“…We used the Bunce survey (Wood et al ., 2015), which recorded all plant species in 16 randomly placed square permanent 200 m 2 plots in each of 103 broadleaved seminatural woodlands across Great Britain. The Bunce survey is the only survey of its type in the UK, incorporating long‐term monitoring of multiple woodlands across England, Scotland and Wales.…”

“…Here we provide the first comprehensive examination of the mycorrhizal mediation hypothesis in British woodlands using the Bunce survey (Wood et al ., 2015). The Bunce survey has so far taken place twice, in 1971 and again in 2000.…”

Land cover and vegetation data from an ecological survey of "key habitat" landscapes in England, 1992–1993

“…The methods are utilised in the national Countryside Survey 1978(Carey et al, 2008 and also the recent Welsh Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme 2013-2016 (Emmett and GMEP team, 2017). The methods have also been successfully deployed in a range of British regional surveys (Wood and Bunce, 2016;Bunce and Smith, 1978;Wood et al, 2015). A comparison of the sampling approaches used in both the Countryside Survey and the Key Habitat Survey is given in Table 1.…”