The data presented on the dashboard below is drawn from a systematic evidence review mapping social science evidence focused on UK land managers’ willingness and ability to create woodland. It offers a resource for anyone looking to quickly understand the evidence landscape relevant to different aspects of woodland creation and land managers, and to identify specific references.
The review was first conducted in early 2022 and identified 226 relevant studies. It was updated in September 2024 with a further 13 studies. Each study was coded according to a range of factors, including land manager type, objectives, drivers, contexts, and type of woodland. There were no restrictions on the publication date.
Note that studies may appear in multiple categories – for example if a study refers to both private and public sector landowners, it will appear in both categories.
Find out more about the Woodland Creation and Expansion project.
The dashboard below allows you to display the evidence as:
To use these, select the filters of interest in the left column. The data will update automatically. At each intersection, references are displayed in a spiral, with the newest references outermost.
To navigate the plot, you can use the controls that appear in the top right corner when you hover over the plot, which includes:
Please note – the dashboard is best used on larger screen sizes. If you are accessing this on a mobile device or tablet, we recommend moving to a larger screen for the best user experience.
Where ‘not specified’ is listed, this means the publication was not more specific. E.g. within the ‘Farmer types’ filter, not specified means no specific types of farmers were referenced.
In the ‘Sector types’ filter by:
Full details of the methodological approach for the review can be found in the accompanying open-access paper, published in Forests and available here: Development of a Tool for Navigating the Evidence concerning Land Managers and Woodland Creation in the United Kingdom
Systematic evidence evaluations and synthesis methodologies have become a recognised standard for accessing, appraising, and synthesising scientific information and are now widely used across many disciplines.
This evidence map followed good practice guidance for systematic maps established by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE, 2018), 3iE (Snilstveit et al., 2017), and the Campbell Collaboration (Littell & White, 2018).
Bibliographic databases and aggregators were searched for academic journal articles. Grey literature was assembled from citations in CAB Abstracts, searches of organisational websites, by contacting relevant organisations and individuals, and snowballing from relevant reviews.
Articles were only included if they met the following inclusion criteria:
Articles that failed to meet the inclusion criteria were excluded from the review. Records that presented only syntheses, reviews, remote sensing data, or models were also included. There was no limitation of date regarding the publication of articles.
The evidence update in 2024 followed a similar approach to the above.
The plots presented in the dashboard use a jitter plot approach in R to visualise where there is an abundance or lack of published literature at chosen cross-sections of the factors.
The evidence review was produced in early 2022 by Forest Research in collaboration with William J. Harvey (University of Oxford and Oxford Systematic Reviews LLP), Gabriel Hemery (Sylva Foundation), Gillian Petrokofsky (University of Oxford, Oxford Systematic Reviews LLP, and Sylva Foundation) and Leo Petrokofsky (Oxford Systematic Reviews LLP). It will be updated by Forest Research annually.
If you have questions that the evidence map may be able to help with, please get in touch.
If you have any feedback on this platform, please get in touch with Stephen McConnachie (stephen.mcconnachie@forestresearch.gov.uk)
Accurate as of September 2024.
CEE. 2018. Guidelines and standards for evidence synthesis in environmental management; Pullin, A.S., Frampton, G.K., Livoreil, B., Petrokofsky, G., Eds.; Version 5.0 [Accessed 29/10/2024]
Littell, J. H., White, H., 2018. The Campbell Collaboration: Providing better evidence for a better world. Research on Social Work Practice, 28(1), 6–12 [Accessed 29/10/2024]
Snilstveit, B., Bhatia, R., Rankin, K., Leach, B., 2017. 3ie evidence gap maps: a starting point for strategic evidence production and use. 3ie Working Paper 28 [Accessed 29/10/2024]