Public forestry agencies have a statutory duty of care to safeguard and enhance the biodiversityvalue of the forests they manage. However, they often lack the information and tools with which to evidenceprogress towards these obligations and to justify decisions.To help demonstrate the impact of management and policies over time, Forest Research (FR), Forestry & Land Scotland (FLS) and Forestry England(FE) have co-developed the FOrest Biodiversity Index (FOBI). The FOBI is a quantitative, transparent and repeatable approach for assessing the biodiversity potential of publicly owned forests in Britain.
Research objectives
How was the FOBI developed?
During co-development of the FOBI, several proxies of woodland biodiversity were identified using expert knowledge and the scientific literature. These woodland and landscape features include measures of diversity, condition, extent and connectivity and are referred to as ‘metrics’. Only those metrics which could be calculated on an annual basis using public forest survey data (the ‘sub-compartment database’) and other spatial-environmental data were taken forward for inclusion in the FOBI. Please see our FOBI User Guidefor a description of each metric.
The FOBI metrics are measured for every public ‘FOBI woodland unit’, which are groups of adjacent sub-compartments, or stands, falling within the same public forest ‘block’ management zone. Measurements are made within the FOBI woodland unit (‘local scale’ metrics), or around the FOBI woodland unit (typically within a 1 km buffer; ‘landscape scale’ metrics). Following best practice guidance from the Joint Research Centre, a statistically robust selection of these metrics are normalised to a 1-100 scale before being combinedor ‘aggregated’ into four FOBI sub-indices (Landscape Diversity; Landscape Extent & Connectivity; Local Diversity; Local Condition). These subindices are then aggregated by the scale grouping to provide a Local and a Landscape FOBI score. Aggregation is carried out using the geometric mean and a weighting procedure that ensures that each metric has an equal influence on the Local or the Landscape FOBI group to which it belongs (whilst down-weighting metrics that are outside of public forest management control).
An illustration of how the FOBI is calculated for each FOBI woodland unit using grouped proxies of woodland biodiversity, referred to as ‘metrics’
The FOBI dataoutputs :
The FOBI outputs are produced on an annual basis to enable changes in forest biodiversity potential to be assessedover time and space:
Mapped outputs:to inform locally targeted action, a map of each FOBI woodland unit with attributed annual Local and Landscape FOBI, sub-index, and metric scoresis provided.
Summary statistics:the FOBI scores are summarised at regional and national scales. This provides an insight into changes of the biodiversity potential of the public forest estate over time for national long-term biodiversity monitoring and reporting.
Please note:
A selection of the local scale metrics are also measured at the resolution of the forest sub–compartment (analogous to a stand) on an annual basis. These aren’t integrated into the FOBI but are made available to users for other purposes.
The same outline approach has been applied to England and Scotland, however the metrics calculated diverge slightly due to data availability. It is therefore not appropriate to compare output scores between the countries.
Latest updates
Latest Updates
The FOBI scores have been calculated for one historical year (2014 – England; 2011 – Scotland), our “baseline year” (2019), 2020 and 2021.
We are now calculating the results for 2022 (and annually going forward) as input data becomes available.
The results have been written up as an open access journal paper, which is currently under peer review (Bellamy et al, In Review).
Data access
The 2014-2021 FOBImetric and index scores for England are provided as a .csv file to allow exploration of the results in complement the peer reviewed paper (Bellamy et al, In Review).England_FOBI_2014_21
FR, FLS and FE staff can explore all FOBI metric and index scores by country for internal business use via several means:
Geostore and Forester Web: the mapped outputs for all years calculated are available to interrogate and download. The datasets capture results across multiple years (scores are best compared across years using the Forester Web/GIS time slider functionality). These outputs are available at a ‘FOBI woodland unit’ resolution (metric, sub-index and final FOBI scores; ‘FOBI – Forest Biodiversity Index (England/Scotland)’) and at a sub-compartment level (‘FOBI – Sub-compartment Biodiversity Metrics (England/Scotland)’ – a selection of biodiversity potential metrics measured at the stand level that are not integrated into the Index, but are made available for other purposes). Index results are presented on a 1-100 normalised scale, where 1 represents the poorest biodiversity potential and 100 the highest. Metric results are provided in their raw format in most cases (units are provided in the FOBI User Guide).
FOBI Spatial Data Explorer (England/Scotland): the mapped data for the latest year of calculation are made available via an online, interactive tool to allow users to explore, interrogate and download the biodiversity potential of public forests over space (between FOBI woodland units) in more detail. Additional functionality not currently available in Forester Web includes the ability to visualise how well a FOBI woodland unit performs in relation to others on a regional and national basis, to easily compare across metric scores for a given unit (rose plots highlight where a unit scores highly or poorly for metrics), and the option to view the results in a simplified, three-tier scoring system of poor, moderate and good. These are available at a ‘FOBI woodland unit’ resolution (metric, sub-index and final FOBI scores) and at a sub-compartment level (a selection of stand-level metrics that are not integrated into the FOBI, but are made available for other purposes).
FOBI Tracker(England/Scotland): the regional and national FOBI summary results are made available to explore changes in the biodiversity potential of public forests over time using an online, interactive tool and report.
Please view our online the FOBI User Guide for further information, including a‘Frequently Asked Questions’ pageand aglossary of terms. More details on the approach and results are provided in an open access journal paper, currently under review:
Chloe Bellamy, Andrew Rattey, Colin Edwards, Kenny Kortland, Andrew Stringer, Eleanor Tew, Stephen Bathgate, Nora Kerecsenyi, Darren Moseley, Kevin Watts, Alice Broome (In Review), The FOrest Biodiversity Index (FOBI): monitoring forest biodiversity potential over space and time.
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