Summary
Branching Out is a project led by Loughborough University that aims to meaningfully account for the social and cultural values of treescapes. This will be done by developing new ways of mapping, predicting, and communicating social and cultural values to support robust, evidence-based decision making and management.
Research Objectives
• Establish an effective culture of interdisciplinary working and dialogue including by developing a common treescape values framework bridging epistemologies and synergising perspectives from across the natural and social sciences, arts and humanities.
• Establish a deliberative process between researchers, policy makers, other end users and citizens to 1) develop and express past, present and future treescape narratives; 2) co-develop indicators that link narrative values to characteristics of treescapes; and 3) test out new innovative policy approaches for integrating S&C values into treescape decisions.
• Using urban tree observatories, hyperspectral remote sensing, historic mapping and computer vision techniques, amenity modelling, and citizen science; develop maps of urban treescapes of the past and present; to generate a new, comprehensive database of tree characteristics across the focal cities.
• Establish processes for communicating S&C values of the present and the future to publics and decision-making audiences at key stages of urban development processes, through development of an impact framework to capture change and a wide range of focal city, national and international knowledge exchange activities.
Our Involvement
Forest Research was one of the research partners on the project leading a work package on dissemination and impact.
Related Research
Branching Beyond will package up the Branching Out framework, approach, and results in a user friendly online values porting template aimed at local government planners, tree officers, voluntary organisations and community groups. https://www.valueoftrees.co.uk/branching-beyond
Further Information
To find out more visit the Branching Out website , look at our StoryMap and read the Forest Research led research impact note.
Funding and Partners
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UKRI – Arts and Humanities Research Council -
UKRI – Economic and Social Research Council -
UKRI – Natural Environment Research Council -
University of Gloucestershire Countryside and Community Research Institute