Urban tree planting is a good idea. The woodlands policy is unfortunately a case of perverse incentives in action. If you have a piece of land available for tree planting but you leave it bare, trees will appear and survive much more successfully than introduced trees (at no cost). Unfortunately the huge grants for tree planting mean doesn't happen. Frustratingly there are virtually no grants for maintaining existing woodland which is generally on farms and mostly described as failing as they are so neglected but which are soaking up vastly more carbon than a new wood would for probably the next fifty years - and would sequester even more if properly managed.
To see how the system is really working in practice, look at adding trees to hedgerows. Seems like a good idea and a farmer can get £19 a tree for doing that, but the rules specify that a hedgerow tree has to be two metres tall. The cost of a two meter sapling would be well over £100. An opportunity lost
Hi Neil! I actually wrote about a similar data set from the woodland trust on tree equity here: https://uncover.substack.com/p/the-root-of-happiness-how-does-tree . This data set uses satellite data on tree cover but the granular data looks v similar to the dataset you reference here.
It highlights the extent to which the tree distribution is so heavily aligned with economic factors. Agree that we should be planting a tonne more trees (esp in cities), but we should also think carefully about the distribution of those trees.
Urban tree planting is a good idea. The woodlands policy is unfortunately a case of perverse incentives in action. If you have a piece of land available for tree planting but you leave it bare, trees will appear and survive much more successfully than introduced trees (at no cost). Unfortunately the huge grants for tree planting mean doesn't happen. Frustratingly there are virtually no grants for maintaining existing woodland which is generally on farms and mostly described as failing as they are so neglected but which are soaking up vastly more carbon than a new wood would for probably the next fifty years - and would sequester even more if properly managed.
To see how the system is really working in practice, look at adding trees to hedgerows. Seems like a good idea and a farmer can get £19 a tree for doing that, but the rules specify that a hedgerow tree has to be two metres tall. The cost of a two meter sapling would be well over £100. An opportunity lost
Hi Neil! I actually wrote about a similar data set from the woodland trust on tree equity here: https://uncover.substack.com/p/the-root-of-happiness-how-does-tree . This data set uses satellite data on tree cover but the granular data looks v similar to the dataset you reference here.
It highlights the extent to which the tree distribution is so heavily aligned with economic factors. Agree that we should be planting a tonne more trees (esp in cities), but we should also think carefully about the distribution of those trees.