National Forest Inventory Woodland Map for England 2017

The Forestry Commission's National Forest Inventory woodland map delineates all forest and woodland areas in England exceeding 0.5 hectares with at least 20% canopy cover. It is updated annually using remote sensing imagery from spring/summer 2016 and incorporates new planting data from the 2017/2018 financial year. The map excludes gaps like roads and rivers wider than 20 meters and uses Ordnance Survey MasterMap as a spatial reference.

Use Cases

• Monitor forest canopy cover changes based on annual updates from remote sensing imagery
• Analyze land use patterns based on mapped woodland boundaries exceeding 0.5 hectares
• Assess new planting and restocking areas based on grant scheme and sub-compartment database information
• Create exclusion maps for infrastructure like roads and rivers based on the 20-meter gap rule

Strengths

• Defines woodland with specific criteria: area >0.5 hectares and canopy cover >=20%
• Updated annually with changes identified from spring/summer 2016 imagery
• Incorporates authoritative spatial data from Ordnance Survey MasterMap

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment

Provenance

Source

Forestry Commission

Collection Method

Remote sensing imagery and aerial orthophotographic imagery assessment, combined with grant scheme and sub-compartment database records.

Time Range

Primary imagery from spring/summer 2016, with updates for the 2017/2018 financial year.

Freshness

Updated annually.

Geography

England.