Resilience – Future Proofing Plant Health

This project aims to develop a more cohesive and comprehensive understanding of the concept of resilience and demonstrate how it can be used to support decision-making and management for plant and tree health. It comes under Work Package six of the Defra-funded Future Proofing Plant Health project which represents a co-ordinated response to growing concerns over plant and tree health.

Research objectives

The information below provides a summary of the objectives across the two phases of the project. More information on the objectives and the related findings and outputs from the Resilience Work Package can be found here.

Phase 1 (2014-2015)

• Collate the definitions and uses of the concept of resilience and develop a decision-making framework.
• Explore the demand and feasibility of a woodland classification system to describe resilience.

Phase 2 (2015-2020)

• Investigate options and considerations for using resistant trees as a strategy for mitigating impacts from pests and pathogens. 
• Provide evidence to help better understand the effect of environmental, ecological, and geographic factors on tree health, particularly in the context of tree pests and pathogens.
• Pilot tools to assess the risk to trees, woodlands and the associated ecosystem services at a range of scales. 
• Test the Resilience Implementation Framework in practice through case studies in England.

Findings

A summary of some of the key findings and outputs from the Resilience Work Package can be found here.

Latest updates

Phase 1 lasted from November 2014 to March 2015 and laid the foundation for Phase 2. Phase 2 commenced in April 2015 and will last until 2020; activities will complement those research challenges funded by the Forestry Commission.

Our involvement

Forest Research led the management and delivery of the Resilience Work Package (WP6) of Future Proofing Plant Health. The level of direct involvement of Forest Research and the research partners Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew varies across the different outputs.

Funding and partners

This project is part of Future Proofing Plant Health funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Partners working alongside Forest Research on Work Package six include the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.