10.30 – 13.00, Tuesday 20th February 2024 (via Microsoft Teams)
Meeting chair: David Slawson (DS), Imperial College London
Microsoft Teams Organiser: Lucy Turner (LT), Forest Research, Alice Holt
Decisions and actions– for information only
THCSN Business
Actions/matters arising from the July 2023 meeting
All actions were either discharged or were included on the agenda. The action to restore the link from the Defra Plant Health portal’s citizen science page to the THCSN webpage” has been completed.
Visits to the THCSN website have reduced to 80 visitors (38 unique users) a month (down from around 900 in July 2023). Of significance is that the Tree Health Citizen Science Learning Pathway is the most popular page accessed (31 visits).
There are 56 subscribers to the JISCMail group which continues to be the main channel for communication within the Network. People are able to manage their own membership to JISCMail.
Research/project summaries
Although deciding previously that a brief summary of members’ research projects would be interesting and informative to other members and to the wider community, only two research summaries have been produced. The consensus was that the likely benefit of a summary was insufficient to justify time taken to prepare it.
Instead, it was thought more efficient for members to include their research in their biographies on the website. In addition, a suggestion was made to post regular (one a month) news items on to website to publicise tree health citizen science.
Decision 1: Members’ research interests/projects will be included in their biographies and not in separate research summaries.
Action 1:All members, who have not already done so, to send biographies (name, affiliation, photograph and either a short summary of research interests/projects or a link to such information) to Lucy Turner to post on the website. Those who have written biographies are encouraged to add a sentence or two on any active research and provide appropriate web links. (Note: currently there are only 14 biographies on the website).
Action 2: Coordinator to start writing short news items for the website – all members are welcome to suggest/draft items too.
Future meetings
The next meeting will be held on Tuesday 2nd July 2024 at Forest Research, Alice Holt and via MS Teams.
The DECIDE project which aims to collect new data to improve biodiversity models for decision-making by putting the recorders’ motivations at the heart of the process. Novel ways of communicating and visualising results to end-users, together with model uncertainties, will also be developed.
Branching out – UK Treescapes (Alison Dyke, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York)
Alison presented an update of the Branching Out Project, which is developing new ways of mapping the social and cultural value of trees to inform policy decisions regarding urban treescapes in the UK
Innovative communication practices e.g. use artists and authors was adopted by the European Alien Species Information Network to raise awareness of invasive species, including in forests.
Priority actions update
Tree health citizen science ‘learning pathway’ (DS)
Two actions from the previous meeting had not been progressed: Action 9 (A9) and Action 8 (A8) to arrange regular review of the ‘learning pathway’, including seeking updates from members.
Those involved in government agencies were of the view that the pathway was of little relevance to their official surveillance and operations work but was of use to their public-facing work e.g. public engagement, raising awareness and education
Janice Ansine indicated that Open University could promote the pathway in their engagement work
Defra are considering doing something with the pathway in Plant Health Week in May
Action 3:Coordinator to arrange regular review of the ‘learning pathway’, including seeking updates from members.
Enhance the tree health surveillance network (Mercy Morris and DS)
UK Garden Sentinel Network (UK GSN)
Mercy Morris gave an update on significant progress made since the meeting on the development of a UK Garden Sentinel Network, including:
An MOU between Observatree, PlantNetwork and Botanic Garden Conservation International has been approved and signed (January 2024)
A Steering Group is in the process of being set-up to guide future development work
PlantNetwork is hosting a webinar (open to all) to introduce the UK GSN and TreeAlert; 15.00 – 16.30 on Tuesday 9 April 2024
A pilot survey for the new UK GSN is planned for Plant Health week; a candidate pest or disease is under consideration
Others
DS reported that initial exchanges have occurred between THCSN and Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI). BSBI members are skilled observers, identifiers and recorders of plant species who have expressed an interest in playing a more active role in monitoring tree/plant pests and diseases in the future, starting perhaps by using TreeAlert.
Action 4:Coordinator to continue on behalf of THCSN to facilitate enhancement of the tree health surveillance network, including UK GSN, BSBI and others.
Policy
UK Plant Risk Register: review and additions (Charles Lane, Fera)
Charles described the UK Plant Risk Register and explained the process involved in adding new plant pests and diseases to the Register along with consideration for their suitability to be included in Observatree’s priority pest and disease list.
Pest and diseases considered for inclusion on the list included:
Pucciniastrum americanum – Needle rust of spruce
Pochazia shantungensis – Brown winged cicada affecting orchard and soft fruit
Jake Morris and Steph Godliman (Defra Plant Health) were unable to join the meeting as they were engaged on a tree planting day. They did kindly provide the following update:
A General Election will be held in 2024 which will have an effect on all policy developments
The GB Plant Biosecurity Strategy is now in its implementation stage. Actions are being tracked through the Plant Health Programme Board and are reported to the National Plant Protection Officer. Defra will periodically seek updates from key stakeholders whose actions are included in the strategy. Good progress has been made on commitments in the Strategy, in particular:
The fourth National Plant Health Week is on 6-12th May 2024. Ideas are currently being sought and scoped – ideas and inputs are welcome from THCSN.
Action 5: All members to submit to Defra any ideas or relevant activities that they have planned for Plant Health Week
The Plant Health Action website (used by signatories of the Plant Health Accord) is being updated. Organisations represented on the THCSN are welcome to join the Accord if they commit to support public engagement in plant health
The 2018 Tree Health Resilience Strategy is being revised and will be integrated with the Woodland Resilience Implementation Plan; the aim is to publish it later this year
Forest Research and sharing tree health data (Sonia Desai, Forest Research)
Sonia reported on Forest Research’s exciting new project to explore the possibility to share tree health data with interested parties.
Background:
For more than 60 years, tree health scientists at Forest Research have diagnosed thousands of tree health enquiries submitted by members of the public from across Britain
For the last ten years, TreeAlert has been the mechanism to submit these enquiries. TreeAlert has been redeveloped in 2023 and it is now easier to use on mobile devices. In addition to submitting information of tree pests or diseases, registered TreeAlert users can now help us to record healthy-looking trees
Going forward, Forest Research would like to share these data because they believe that information on the distribution of tree pests and diseases across Britain would be of interest to many groups and individuals.
What’s happened:
To help FR understand who would find tree health data useful and the preferred methods of interacting with it, the held three stakeholder workshops in January.
These were two-hour workshops which introduced TreeAlert and the existing data to participants and explored who might have an interest in the data and how it would be of use to them
Regional authorities and landowners were identified as two groups with an interest; they are interested in the data to inform decisions on surveillance and management; they have the technical capability to receive an export of the data which they can search, filter and use for mapping purposes.
A dashboard could be provided to TreeAlert to provide simpler visualisations of the data for less expert audiences.
Discussion: various comments were made including:
Researchers and scientists should also have technical skills to handle data exports for use in their research
Data export to the NBN Trust and its Atlases should be explored as the most cost-effective way to make the data more accessible to the public and the wider biological recording community
DS reminded participants that Dr Erin Roger (CSIRO Australia) made a presentation on of The Atlas of Living Australia’s biosecurity hub to our last meeting and suggested that Sonia might consider speaking with Erin to hear more about the system in Australia
Action A6: Coordinator on behalf of THCSN to continue to facilitate exploration of greater sharing/accessibility of tree health data from all sources.
Observatree and TreeAlert (Lucy Turner and Matt Parratt)
Recent changes to the TreeAlert reporting system include: a new feature on diagnosis feedback, a report dashboard of TreeAlert records and work on development of a new open data interface.
The process to train and keep volunteers motivated was described, including: a programme of winter webinars, regional summer training days – it was exciting to see that RHS Harlow Carr will host the Yorkshire and North-East training day in 2024; and mentoring/science days. It was also reported that that over 20,000 reports have been submitted by Observatree volunteers in the 10 years that the project has been running.
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