Case Study: A History of Deforestation in the United Kingdom

As the jingle of Santa's sleigh approaches the inspiration for this post came from the dead tree standing next to me covered in baubles and tinsel. This blog post has examined deforestation on various corners of the globe - the Amazon, Borneo, America and Africa - but is yet to explore the deforestation of trees in the UK. This is what this blog post will do - it will explore deforestation in Britain.

A History of Deforestation

Woodland Cover in England (Forestry Policy Statement)

Long ago Britain was covered in a primeval forest of mighty oaks and sharp pines that stretched from North to South. The significant clearing of trees started during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods of our history which can be shown in the pollen records (Brown 2002).  It was initially thought that deforestation was the result of conversion of woodland to agricultural land (Edwards and Hirons 1984) - similar to what we see in Africa and the Amazon today. However, archaeological evidence is contradictory to the pollen evidence that supported this hypothesis. The decline in tree pollen ad increase in grass pollen at this time was caused by purposive deforestation - a concept that embodies a theory of planned alteration to the environment. In this case the creation of clearing within the forests for hunting.

A post online offers a brief account of when deforestation occurred for different regions around the UK with most woodland (particularly that in the South East and East Anglia) clearing during the Bronze Age or the Roman Period. An article published in Science Letter in 2003 whilst brief showed the link between flooding and climate change  but also showed the importance of land use change in flooding. Flood risk has increased over the last 4000 years since the Bronze Age because woodland has been turned into farmland. In natural river basins, trees intercept rainwater and slows the runoff process or returns the water back into the atmosphere via transpiration. When deforestation occurs, this runoff increases creating a shorter lag time and a larger peak meaning it is more likely for the river to burst its banks. This was demonstrated in 2004 in the Cornish village of Boscastle in which land use change within the basin increased runoff (although it was a combination of many factors that resulted in the flash flood).

As the graph above demonstrates that was a rapid reduction in forest cover following and during the industrial revolution and during WWI. However, forest cover increases after the 1920s following the Acland Report in 1918 and the formation of the Forestry Commission in 1935 that implemented the formation of forest parks and afforestation techniques by 1935 (Smout et al. 2007*).

 In recent years, with a greater awareness of the environment, forest cover has increased under various government and non-government initiatives. Levy and Milne (2004) provide an intriguing synthesis into recent deforestation rates. Deforestation rates must be reported under the Kyoto Protocol with 500 hectares of unlicensed deforestation in the UK in recent years (since 1990). The article makes an interesting point that variations in techniques for estimating deforestation since 1990 yield different results. The results range from 1000 hectares to 7000 hectares. The article settles on the value of 1375 hectares since 1990.