A national perspective on recent changes in the spatial characteristics of woodland in the British landscape

In this paper, we assessed to what extent the overall increase in woodland area observed in Great Britain over the last 20 years (about 9%) has modified the distribution and spatial characteristics of woodland at the landscape level. Field mapping data recorded in 1984 and 1998 during the national monitoring programme Countryside Survey were analysed for the six main regions of Great Britain. Results indicate that, woodland patches are very dynamic features in the British landscape, hence contradicting the widely shared view that woodland are stable elements in a landscape. It also appeared that the net increase in woodland density observed across regions hid important turnovers and that a substantial number of existing woodland patches, some of them probably quite ancient, were either removed or suffered from shrinkage. Gains in woodland density resulted as much from the proliferation of newly planted patches than from the expansion of existing patches, hence a relatively limited increase in average patch size. It, therefore, appears that the increase in total area of woodland in Britain has not stopped the continuous loss of old woodland and has only led to little de-fragmentation.