Tree Species Selection and Climate Change
- Ross Guyton
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
When planning new tree planting, increasing the diversity of our woodlands is an important way of strengthening them against future threats, such as changing temperature, pests, diseases, wildfires and winter storms. This diversity includes the age and species of trees and the provenance of the plants (i.e. where they come from). Different species will adapt in different ways, so planting lots of different species spreads the risk and increases resilience to a wider range of threats.
Building Resilient Woodlands for the Future
Woodlands are permanent, long term assets and so ensuring their success for many years is essential. In forestry terms, when planning your woodland creation and management, this means choosing multiple species (either in an intimate mix or in blocks) and managing your woods to have maximum diversity of structure. This is achieved by avoiding single age, single story woodlands and even anticipating what will grow best in a situation when our climate has warmed by anything from 1 to 4 °C. Already the scientific guidance is that we should be planting oak trees whose acorns have been sourced from more southern regions such as mid-France, so that they will be more tolerant of the predicted hotter UK growing conditions. This species and provenance selection is even more critical when planning woodlands with a carbon sequestration objective, as future predicted carbon storage performance is calculated, validated, and fixed with the Woodland Carbon Code.
Tree Species for the Future UK Woodlands
Tree species diversity is a fundamental building block of forest resilience. To help forest planning, operations and investment, the Forestry Commission ('FC') have identified a core species list of 30 tree species - called 'Species for the Future'. These species have been selected based on analysis of their individual traits, using robust evidence to identify those species that have the best chance of thriving.
The FC used a 'multi-criteria decision analysis' to rank and prioritise tree species. For a longlist of 63 species, they gathered detailed information across 10 criteria (table below). They then asked forestry experts to score these 10 criteria in order of importance, which allowed them to generate criteria weightings. All this information was combined to generate a unique score and rank for every species. They repeated this exercise for each of the Forestry England six districts, using locally tailored data (like climate suitability) and criteria weightings. The overall national list – 'Species for the Future' – includes each district’s top 15 species as a minimum. This ensures that they accounted for the individuality of every district, as well as those species that were universally important.
Objective | Criteria | Data source |
Suited to current and future climatic conditions | Suitability to future climate | Environmental Site Classification (ESC) models – species' ecological suitability predicted for 2080 |
| Confidence in planting establishment | Forest Research classification of native, principal, secondary, plot-stage and specimen species |
| Drought tolerance | Academic peer-reviewed literature, supplemented by expert opinion |
Tolerant to current and future pest and pathogen pressures | Tolerance to ‘high risk’ pests and diseases currently in the UK | UK Plant Health Risk Register - susceptibility to the high risk (risk rating >60) pests/pathogens currently present in the UK |
| Tolerance to ‘high risk’ pests and diseases not yet in the UK | UK Plant Health Risk Register - susceptibility to the high risk (risk rating >60) pests/pathogens that are currently absent from the UK |
Provide commercial timber products | Future potential productivity (growing speed) | Environmental Site Classification (ESC) models – species’ timber suitability (yield class) predicted for 2080 |
| Technical timber suitability for use in construction | Academic peer-reviewed literature, supplemented by expert opinion |
| Range of timber end uses | CABI compendium and expert opinion to score delivery against 18 potential timber products |
Feasible to be supplied by our nursery | Current seed availability, or feasibility of establishing new sources | Nursery expertise |
Suitability to propagation in a commercial tree nursery |
Source: 'Species for the Future - Methodology', Forestry England
The FC list of tree species for the future
Aspen (Populus tremula)
Beech (Fagus sylvatica)
Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)
Common alder (Alnus glutinosa)
Corsican pine (Pinus nigra subsp. laricio)
Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)
Downy birch (Betula pubescens)
European silver fir (Abies alba)
Field maple (Acer campestre)
Grand fir (Abies grandis)
Grey alder (Alnus incana)
Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)
Japanese red cedar (Cryptomeria japonica)
Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia)
Macedonian pine (Pinus peuce)
Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster)
Norway spruce (Picea abies)
Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur)
Red oak (Quercus rubra)
Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)
Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris)
Sessile oak (Quercus petraea)
Silver birch (Betula pendula)
Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis)
Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa)
Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus)
Western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla)
Western red cedar (Thuja plicata)
Wild cherry (Prunus avium)
Wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis)
The list above contains many species already forming the bulk of England’s woodland creation species mix, from both a commercial and resilient point of view, which is reassuring that we have been planting robust woodlands over the past few years.
There are some species in the list that need to be given proper considered before selection such as sycamore, which is a very good species but is very susceptible to squirrel damage and sooty bark disease in more dryer parts of the UK. Similarly, spruce planting is currently banned in large parts of Southeast England and East Anglia due to an imported bark beetle infestation, and shallow rooted species such as beech, Scots Pine and Birch are beginning to suffer in lighter, thinner soils in East England.
Finally, the commerciality of some species needs to be explored more as demand for Grand Fir as an example is low due to its poor strength qualities and it is very difficult to find a Lodgepole Pine that is straight and usable for anything other than wood chip!
💡 If you would like to know more about tree species choice for your needs, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@oakbankgc.co.uk or on 01480 890686.
🌱 As well as advice and consultancy services, we supply a wide range of trees, shrubs and hedging species and tree guards, suitable for a variety of uses, from shelterbelts and boundaries to wildlife corridors, woodland creation and habitat restoration.
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