New Woodland Map of Scotland Published  

A new woodland map of Scotland, showing all woodland down to 0.5ha in size, has been published. The map has been created from data gathered for the Forestry Commission’s next National Forest Inventory (NFI), which will be the most accurate and comprehensive inventory of information about Britain’s woodlands that has ever been compiled.

Assessing the current area of woodland across Britain, the provisional findings are that Scotland has 1.384 million hectares of forest, or 17.8% forest cover, a slight increase on the previous estimate.

When completed the NFI will provide information on issues such as the composition, age, health and condition of woodlands, sequestered carbon, timber volume and many other topics spanning all public, private, urban and rural woodland.

It will also help to ensure that Britain's forests can withstand expected changes in the climate and contribute to climate change mitigation. NFI information will also underpin a wide range of future decisions about topics such as nature conservation, research, tree planting, forest and timber industries' development, and public recreation.