National Forest Inventory Scotland 2023: Woodland Map and Forest Types

The National Forest Inventory (NFI) woodland map for Scotland delineates all forest and woodland areas over 0.5 hectares with at least 20% canopy cover or potential. Forestry Commission copyright data from 2024, the map is updated annually using Sentinel 2 imagery from spring/summer 2023, aerial photography, and planting records. Woodland areas are classified into 16 interpreted forest types (IFT), and non-woodland open areas are described with 11 interpreted open area (IOA) categories.

Use Cases

• Classify forest composition based on 16 interpreted forest type (IFT) categories like Conifer, Broadleaved, and Mixed.
• Monitor annual changes in woodland boundaries using Ordnance Survey MasterMap and satellite imagery.
• Identify non-woodland open areas within forests using 11 interpreted open area (IOA) categories such as Open water and Grassland.
• Analyze forest disturbance and recovery based on categories like Felled, Windblow, Young trees, and Ground prep.

Strengths

• Annual update cycle ensures temporal relevance for change detection.
• Explicit spatial criteria: includes areas over 0.5 hectares with >20% canopy cover and excludes gaps wider than 20 meters.
• Detailed classification scheme with 16 forest types and 11 open area types.

Limitations

• Row count and file format are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Woodland areas smaller than 0.5 hectares are excluded from this map and covered in a separate survey.

Provenance

Source

Forestry Commission / Forestry and Land Scotland

Collection Method

Interpretation of Sentinel 2 satellite imagery, aerial orthophotography, and integration with grant scheme and sub-compartment databases.

Time Range

Primary assessment based on spring/summer 2023 imagery; includes planting data for financial year 2022/2023.

Freshness

Updated annually; the description references imagery from 2023 and planting data from the 2022/2023 financial year.

Geography

Scotland, United Kingdom.