Ten Years of Intensive Environmental Monitoring in British Forests

In the early 1980s, deterioration in the crown condition of trees across many regions of Europe raised concerns over the health of European forests, and many countries established surveys to monitor this. In Britain, the Forest Condition Survey was instigated in 1984 (Binns et al., 1985) with an annual assessment of tree crown density on between 300 and 400 plots of five widely planted forest tree species: oak, beech, Scots pine, Sitka spruce and Norway spruce (Hendry et al., 2005). In 1985, forest condition monitoring was co-ordinated across Europe under a United Nations initiative1. This is known as the ‘Level I’ programme.