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.


Contemporary Issues and Discussion
The Forestry Commission owns 700,000 hectares of England and Scotland and is Britain's biggest land manager and aims to increase forest cover in the England and Scotland. Britain only has 5% of its original forest cover left. The Forestry Commissions's Statistics page showed that the UK produced 3.5 million cubic metres of sawn wood and 4.5 tonnes of paper in 2013. It also claims that the biomass industry is a key driver of future growth in the UK and hence deforestation is expected to increase.

Climatologist Judith Curry wrote a piece about deforestation in the United Kingdom during a visit this year. The majority of deforestation in the UK is driven by the need for biomass for fuel (as an alternative to crude oil). Curry (2015) is very critical of this suggesting that burning biomass makes air quality worse, adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and damages unique ecosystems. Drawing her conclusion from research that suggested that burning wood released fine particulate emissions which can impact on human health and along with fossil fuel combustion causes 350,000 deaths every year. She also drew arguments from the Telegraph which found that burning wood can be three times worse for the climate than burning coal. It is clear from her piece that there is a lack of research into deforestation in the UK in recent years. It was incredibly hard to find academic research into it - let alone up to date research. In a small island nation such as the UK, the impact of deforestation on hydrology, the economy and politics should be quite significant and yet the focus of deforestation is still on the tropics.

Biomass in the UK is set to increase (source)

This blog post is shorter than usual but like Curry's post I think it demonstrates the lack of contemporary and available academic research on the topic of deforestation in Britain which has a long history of chopping down ancient trees. With a turn to biomass I suspect that deforestation will become a talking point as will the government's involvement in deforestation abroad following COP21 in Paris which saw Britain pledge $5 billion to combat tropical deforestation - but should it focus on afforestation and combating deforestation in its own country first? Furthermore, is deforestation the future fuel for the UK? Is it a necessary evil?



*Smout et al. 2007 is available only in book form