We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Preparing to search
Continuous cover is an approach to forest management that seeks to create more diverse forests, both structurally and in terms of species composition, by avoiding clearfelling. The development of more diverse forests is a sensible way to reduce the risks posed by future changes in the climate and biotic threats.
The aims of this research programme are to:
The medium term objectives are:
Work in the programme is divided into a number of projects and studies:
The following people also work on the programme:
Team members work closely with colleagues in the Technical Services and other parts of Forest Research.
This research is funded by the Forestry Commission Regeneration and sustainable silviculture programme.
Other funders include the Scottish Forestry Trust and REINFFORCE (An INTERREG project of the EU).
The project works in close partnership with Forestry Commission Scotland at the Glentress CCF Trial Area and Forestry Commission Wales at Clocaenog CCF Research Area. Two members of the team also sit on the Forestry Commission CCF Working Group.
Forestry Commission policy
Continuous cover silviculture is now being widely practised in British forests and it has recentyl been estimated that greater than 10% of all Forestry Commission woodlands use it. There is no doubt that this percentage will increase because of policy developments. For example in Wales diversifying approaches to management is a key strategic objective in Woodlands for Wales (Forestry Commission Wales, 2009) that seeks to ‘avoid clearfelling on our own woodland estate whenever alternative management methods would deliver a wider range of ecosystem services’. In addition, the United Kingdom Woodland Assurance Scheme 2006 (UKWAS) requires forest managers to ‘increasingly favour’ CCF in windfirm conifer plantations and semi-natural woodland.
The Forestry Commission’s Science and Innovation strategy for British forestry (Forestry Commission, 2010) has recognised the changes outlined above and made diversifying approaches to forest management one of seven research themes.
Costs and revenues of transformation to continuous cover forestry
Modelling silvicultural options with Sitka spruce
FCPN016.pdf
(PDF-1955K)
Operational Guidance Booklet 7 – Managing Continuous Cover Forests
Report on adoption of alternative silvicultural systems in Britain
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.