Research
The FOrest Biodiversity Index (FOBI)
Research Status:current
Public forestry agencies have a statutory duty of care to safeguard and enhance the biodiversity value of the forests they manage. However, they often lack the information and tools with which to evidence progress towards these obligations and to justify decisions. To help demonstrate the impact of management and policies over time, Forest Research (FR), Forestry & Land Scotland (FLS) and Forestry England (FE) have co-developed the FOrest Biodiversity Index (FOBI). The FOBI is a quantitative, transparent and repeatable approach for assessing the biodiversity potential of publicly owned forests in Britain.
During co-development of the FOBI, several proxies of woodland biodiversity were identified using expert knowledge and the scientific literature. These woodland and landscape features include measures of diversity, condition, extent and connectivity and are referred to as ‘metrics’. Only those metrics which could be calculated on an annual basis using public forest survey data (the ‘sub-compartment database’) and other spatial-environmental data were taken forward for inclusion in the FOBI. Please see our FOBI User Guide for a description of each metric.
The FOBI metrics are measured for every public ‘FOBI woodland unit’, which are groups of adjacent sub-compartments, or stands, falling within the same public forest ‘block’ management zone. Measurements are made within the FOBI woodland unit (‘local scale’ metrics), or around the FOBI woodland unit (typically within a 1 km buffer; ‘landscape scale’ metrics). Following best practice guidance from the Joint Research Centre, a statistically robust selection of these metrics are normalised to a 1-100 scale before being combined or ‘aggregated’ into four FOBI sub-indices (Landscape Diversity; Landscape Extent & Connectivity; Local Diversity; Local Condition). These subindices are then aggregated by the scale grouping to provide a Local and a Landscape FOBI score. Aggregation is carried out using the geometric mean and a weighting procedure that ensures that each metric has an equal influence on the Local or the Landscape FOBI group to which it belongs (whilst down-weighting metrics that are outside public forest management control).
The FOBI data outputs :
The FOBI outputs are produced on an annual basis to enable changes in forest biodiversity potential to be assessed over time and space:
Mapped outputs: to inform locally targeted action, a map of each FOBI woodland unit with attributed annual Local and Landscape FOBI, sub-index, and metric scores is provided.
Summary statistics: the FOBI scores are summarised at regional and national scales. This provides an insight into changes of the biodiversity potential of the public forest estate over time for national long-term biodiversity monitoring and reporting.
Please note:
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Data access
The 2014-2021 FOBI metric and index scores for England are provided as a .csv file to allow exploration of the results in complement the peer reviewed paper (Bellamy et al., In Review). England_FOBI_2014_21
FR, FLS and FE staff can explore all FOBI metric and index scores by country for internal business use via several means:
Geostore and Forester Web: the mapped outputs for all years calculated are available to interrogate and download. The datasets capture results across multiple years (scores are best compared across years using the Forester Web/GIS time slider functionality). These outputs are available at a ‘FOBI woodland unit’ resolution (metric, sub-index and final FOBI scores; ‘FOBI – Forest Biodiversity Index (England/Scotland)’) and at a sub-compartment level (‘FOBI – Sub-compartment Biodiversity Metrics (England/Scotland)’ – a selection of biodiversity potential metrics measured at the stand level that are not integrated into the Index, but are made available for other purposes). Index results are presented on a 1-100 normalised scale, where 1 represents the poorest biodiversity potential and 100 the highest. Metric results are provided in their raw format in most cases (units are provided in the FOBI User Guide).
FOBI Spatial Data Explorer (England/Scotland): the mapped data for the latest year of calculation are made available via an online, interactive tool to allow users to explore, interrogate and download the biodiversity potential of public forests over space (between FOBI woodland units) in more detail. Additional functionality not currently available in Forester Web includes the ability to visualise how well a FOBI woodland unit performs in relation to others on a regional and national basis, to easily compare across metric scores for a given unit (rose plots highlight where a unit scores highly or poorly for metrics), and the option to view the results in a simplified, three-tier scoring system of poor, moderate and good. These are available at a ‘FOBI woodland unit’ resolution (metric, sub-index and final FOBI scores) and at a sub-compartment level (a selection of stand-level metrics that are not integrated into the FOBI, but are made available for other purposes).
FOBI Tracker (England/Scotland): the regional and national FOBI summary results are made available to explore changes in the biodiversity potential of public forests over time using an online, interactive tool and report.
Further information
Please contact Andrew Rattey andrew.rattey@forestresearch.gov.uk and/or Chloe Bellamy chloe.bellamy@forestresearch.gov.uk to request access to the online, interactive tools or with any questions.
Please view our online the FOBI User Guide for further information, including a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ page and a glossary of terms. More details on the approach and results are provided in an open access journal paper, currently under review:
Chloe Bellamy, Andrew Rattey, Colin Edwards, Kenny Kortland, Andrew Stringer, Eleanor Tew, Stephen Bathgate, Nora Kerecsenyi, Darren Moseley, Kevin Watts, Alice Broome (In Review), The FOrest Biodiversity Index (FOBI): monitoring forest biodiversity potential over space and time.
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