Overview

This project will address the currently limited empirical evidence on tree response to drought in the UK and inform decisions on both species choice and management to enable the quantification of changing risk under alternative future climate change scenarios to increase forest resilience and improved decision-making.

To inform ‘climate resilient forestry’ policy and management, understanding the drought response of UK tree species is crucial but remains largely unquantified. The Forestry & Woodland Resilience to Drought (FORWaRD) project will address these knowledge gaps by providing an integrated assessment of drought resilience for a variety of UK tree species across a range of temporal and spatial scales.

As our climate warms, the intensity, duration, and frequency of future extreme drought events are expected to increase across much of the world (Xu et al., 2019), while increases in extreme temperature events have already been documented across the UK (Dodd et al., 2021).

Future extreme events will likely interact, amplifying their impact with consequences for forest structure, function, and the ability of these systems to sequester and store carbon (McDowell et al., 2020). Despite this risk, very little is known about the drought resilience of most UK tree species, how these species or species mixtures have responded to past drought events, or how vulnerable both newly established and mature woodlands are to future extreme events.

Understanding drought risk and forest resilience is critical to achieving Net Zero targets and ensuring the continuity and stability of forest systems in the face of climate change, along with the products and services these forests provide.

This project is part of the Nature for Climate Fund.