This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A University of Cambridge–led team has used aerial surveys across a huge swath of the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland to create detailed 3D maps that show the beginnings of large-scale recovery of native woodland. The maps document a success story for the Cairngorms Connect nature restoration partnership: Young trees are spreading naturally into areas where woodlands have been missing for centuries, following a landscape-scale approach to deer management across the partnership's 60,000 hectares.
From a light aircraft flying 600 m (2,000 feet) above the ground, a laser-scanning technology known as LiDAR collected the data used by the Cambridge team. Their new AI-supported method of analyzing the data revealed more than 6 million individual trees across the 569 km2 survey area, as well as the exact height of every tree. The results show that 2.65 million trees—just over 40% of those surveyed—were under 5 meters (16 feet) tall.
These small, regenerating trees grow mostly near the edges of existing forests, where seeds are most likely to fall—but some new trees were found growing more than half a kilometer from the forest edge. The maps also show that habitat type matters for tree regeneration: Fewer new trees had established in boggy areas than in dry heathlands. "The ability to map regenerating trees so precisely, at such a huge scale, is a breakthrough for monitoring nature restoration at a landscape scale.
It means we can effectively map young trees, assess whether restoration targets are being met, and inform future restoration work," said Dr. Aland Chan of the University of Cambridge's Center for Landscape Regeneration, who co-led the work. "The new LiDAR-based method is excellent at tracking where new woodlands are establishing across the landscape, and also for tracking the impacts of fires—which are increasing in severity with climate change," said Dr.
Pip Gullett of the Cairngorms Connect partnership, co-author of the study. She added, "This is going to be a great way to monitor large-scale woodland expansion going forward, as more and more landowners across Scotland are looking to re-establish native woodlands." The study is published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Airborne LiDAR shoots laser beams at high frequency from a light aircraft toward the ground.
The beams bounce back when they hit trees or any other surface. By recording the time taken for each laser pulse to bounce back to the plane, the team could create a three-dimensional image of the landscape with vastly more detail than is possible to collect through ground-based surveys. Point measurements on the ground validated the accuracy of the results, and comparison with field surveys conducted by Cairngorms Connect and RSPB Scotland proved that the team's method can accurately assess forest expansion at a landscape scale.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
