General Content

Research areas/workstreams

DESNZ MOU Workstream 1: Research to support UK climate mitigation

This workstream aims to support the governments Net Zero Strategy, by improving understanding of the contribution of forestry to delivering Net Zero by 2050. This is achieved by the following 5 tasks:

Task 1 – Carbon impacts of sustainable forest management practices

Different forest management practices can impact the carbon sequestered by existing forests and their soils, however, the impacts and as such the mitigation potential of these practices are not well quantified. Understanding the scale of impact of different forest management practices, and their potential rate of deployment, will enable policymakers to understand how existing forests can be used to contribute to the UK’s climate targets.

Key Research Question:  What are the carbon impacts, and mitigation potential of different sustainable forest management actions in the UK, and what data (activity and emissions) are available for them?

Forest management practices considered: Fallow period, rotation length, species choice, restoration of management, adoption of CCF, thinning intensity, mixed woodlands, brash retention, ground preparation, establishment method (planting vs. natural regeneration).

Task 2 – Soil carbon

Soil carbon stocks contribute a major pool of carbon to total forest carbon stocks, and are highly variable depending on previous land use, management practices, soil type, climate, and time since woodland establishment. There is a lack of understanding of how forest management practices impact soil carbon stocks, which increases the risk that policymakers are underestimating (or overestimating) the benefits and timing of certain mitigation actions.

Key Question: What are the impacts of forestry management practices on soil carbon stocks in current and future forest areas, and how do the impacts of such practices vary by soil type, climate, and previous land uses?

Forest management practices considered: monocultures vs mixed woodlands, clearfell harvest vs continuous cover forestry, restocking practices, ground preparation, and brash removal. More could be added as data gaps emerge.

Task 3 – International forestry modelling

There are several forest carbon models in use in the international research community. The aim of this task is to explore opportunities to exchange knowledge to understand similarities and differences between models, compare model outputs and to use this to improve our own forestry modelling capacity.

Key questions: What can be learnt from international efforts to model forestry systems, and how can lessons learned be applied to the UK’s forestry modelling capability?

Task 4 – UK GHG emission projections modelling

UK emissions projections model scenarios across the Forestry sector are based on a range of policy assumptions, of ranging ambition. In recent years, as the UK moves towards Net Zero and sets policies which are aimed at achieving emissions reductions/enhanced removals, it has become evident that current projections modelling needs to be more agile and ensure that UK emissions projections modelling are accurate and are responsive to current and future policy.

Key Question: What actions are needed to make the forestry projections more accurate and more responsive to changes in policy, and what is the impact on net emissions from implementing improvements to the projections?

Task 5 – Climate resilience of UK forests

As afforestation targets play a key role in the UK’s Net Zero strategy, we must understand how new planting may be impacted by climate change, and how this could vary by region and species. This will enable policymakers, government agencies, and landowners/managers to make decisions around future forests in the UK. Also, understanding how future climates may impact existing forests and their carbon stocks will enable the UK Government to better track our progress towards climate targets.

Key Question:  1) What are the implications of future climate change for UK forests and land use decisions, in terms of forest resilience, carbon sequestration potential, and the survival of existing and newly established forests? and 2) how can climate scenarios be integrated into UK emissions projection modelling?

Workstream 2: Activities to maintain and improve the UK Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory

This workstream aims to contribute to developing a more robust GHG inventory for the UK, through a more accurate and complete representation of forestry activities. This is achieved by the following 5 tasks:

Task 6. Further improvements to CARBINE

The forest carbon accounting model, CARBINE, has recently been upgraded to be used in R (CARBINE-R – Forest Research), and made freely available. Further upgrades to CARBINE are required to improve the accuracy of the UK GHGI and projections, improve the representation of policy or forest management decisions, and to enable natural disturbances and climate change impacts to be reflected.

Key Question: What changes can be made to CARBINE to enable more accurate representation of forest changes in the UK?

Proposed upgrade areas: Improvements to the CARBINE harvesting and restocking assumptions (represented in the ‘reconcile’ module); Incorporate M1v2 into the national GHG Inventory, implement the functionality to reflect natural disturbances, and incorporate new tree biomass equations.

Task 7. Upgrade of the SCOTIA soil model

SCOTIA is the soil carbon module of CARBINE. The aim of this task is to upgrade SCOTIA, to improve accuracy when modelling soil carbon stock change and sensitivity to forest management decisions, such as ground preparation.

Key question: What changes can be made to the SCOTIA model to make it a more accurate reflection of forest changes in the UK?

Model parameters to be reviewed and improved: ground preparation intensity; root exudates, litter and humic layer, organic soils, understorey vegetation, and soil inputs from litter and deadwood.

Task 8. Application of the 3^rd National Forest Inventory (NFI) cycle for the GHGI

The NFI is a crucial input data source for the UK GHGI. The aim of this task is to review the new data available from the recently collected 3^rd NFI cycle, assess how this could better inform the UK GHGI, and implement any identified improvements.  Additionally, the NFI sampling design and data collection protocols will be reviewed to determine where they could be improved to provide more useful data for the GHGI.

Key questions: How can the 3^rd NFI cycle be applied to the GHGI to update activity data, and how could future forest inventories be improved to make the data more readily usable for the GHGI?

Use cases: Validating the GHGI against the NFI, assessing restocking and harvesting practices, assessing understorey biomass, estimating deadwood carbon from the NFI,

Task 9. Spatial representation of land use and land use change for forestry in the GHGI

The aim of this task is to explore how earth observation tools and techniques can be applied to develop spatially explicit forest carbon stock change estimates, and to assess how these could be applied to improve the GHGI for forest land, trees outside of woodland (TOW), and local authority GHGIs.

Key question: How can remote sensing methods, data and tools be used to estimate forest carbon stock and stock change, provide improved input data to the UK GHGI, and enable the move towards spatially explicit GHG emission estimates?

Task 10. Emission factor and assumptions review

This task will review the input data and assumptions used for the forest land component of the GHGI and recommend the highest priority improvements that should be addressed.

Key questions: Which emission factors used for forest land and harvested wood products are the least robust and how could these be improved?