National Forest Inventory: England Woodland Map and Forest Types

Forestry Commission's National Forest Inventory maps all woodland in England over 0.5 hectares with at least 20% canopy cover, including areas of new planting, clearfell, and windblow. Woodland polygons are classified into detailed interpreted forest types such as Conifer, Broadleaved, and Coppice using aerial photography and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. The map is updated annually, integrating data from grant schemes and national forestry estate databases.

Use Cases

• Monitoring changes in woodland cover and forest type based on annual updates and satellite imagery.
• Assessing the impact of forestry grant schemes and new planting using integrated financial year data.
• Planning land management around features like clearfell, windblow, and restock areas identified in the map.
• Analyzing the distribution of specific forest types (e.g., Coppice, Mixed mainly broadleaved) for ecological studies.

Strengths

• Includes detailed forest type classification (Interpreted Forest Type) for areas over 0.5 hectares.
• Updated annually with changes identified using Ordnance Survey MasterMap and recent Sentinel-2/satellite imagery.
• Integrates authoritative data sources including grant schemes and the sub-compartment databases of Forestry England, Forestry and Land Scotland, and Natural Resources Wales.

Limitations

• Excludes woodland patches smaller than 0.5 hectares (with minor exceptions), which are covered only by a separate sample survey.
• Metadata for key attributes like row count, specific columns, and license is missing from all platform listings.
• Descriptions contain conflicting reference years for source imagery (2021 vs. 2022) and financial year data (2020/21 vs. 2021/22).

Provenance

Source

Forestry Commission

Collection Method

Interpretation of aerial photography and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, combined with administrative data from forestry grant schemes and estate databases.

Time Range

Annual updates; source imagery referenced from spring/summer 2021 and 2022.

Freshness

Last metadata update recorded as 2026-04-07, though the underlying data references imagery from 2021/2022.

Geography

England (with notes on cross-border areas and references to Scotland and Wales).