England Woodland Creation Low Sensitivity Map v3.0

The Forestry Commission has developed a series of sensitivity maps, based on nationally available and consistent datasets, to indicate where there are likely to be fewer sensitivities to woodland creation.

These maps will help to indicate to landowners whether there is likely to be potential to establish new woodland on their land, and where there may be sensitivities that would preclude woodland creation.

The maps do not indicate that, where there is a low sensitivity to new woodland being created, that planting will be agreed by the Forestry Commission, the regulator for woodland and forestry projects in England. However, the low sensitivity areas have fewest identified constraints to address, and it should be easier to agree creating new woodland here than in other areas.

Likewise, creation of new woodland, particularly of native woodland, may be appropriate outside ‘low sensitivity’ areas, but the appropriateness of proposals in these areas will again be determined by the Forestry Commission, including through responding to the views of Natural England, Environment Agency, Historic England, the Local Authority and other stakeholders, where relevant.

The Sensitivity Maps exclude all land that is unsuitable for planting, including urban areas, existing (and assumed) woodland and habitats that are considered too wet, too rocky, and too salty to support the growth of trees. This is achieved through restricting the Sensitivity Maps to the following land covers, based on the most recent update of Landcover Map:

Acid grassland
Arable and horticulture
Calcareous grassland
Heather
Heather grassland
Improved grassland
Neutral grassland

The spatial datasets and individual layers of those datasets that define land as unsuitable and low, medium, or high sensitivity for woodland creation in the Full Sensitivity Map version 3.0, the Low Sensitivity Map and their variants are set out in the document here:

www.gov.uk/guidance/a-guide-to-forestry-commissions-sensitivity-maps-for-woodland-creation

Attributes:

‘Sensitivity’ = the sensitivity to woodland creation level the land has been assigned.

‘Area (Hectares)’ = the area in hectares of the polygon.

Lineage:

This is version 3.0 of these layers, having gone through several iterations where new data inputs were added and changes made to how these were treated as sensitivities for woodland creation. These are the first versions of the layers to be published as Open Data.

林业委员会基于全国范围内可用且一致的数据库，开发了一系列敏感性地图，旨在标示在哪些区域建立林地可能遇到的敏感性较低。这些地图将有助于向土地所有者指示在其土地上建立新林地的可能性，以及可能存在的、会阻碍林地创建的敏感性。这些地图并未表明，在新建林地敏感性较低的区域，林业委员会（英格兰林地及林业项目的监管机构）将同意植树。然而，低敏感性区域所面临的限制最少，因此在此类区域创建新林地应比在其他区域更为便捷。同样，在‘低敏感性’区域之外创建新林地，尤其是原生林地，可能是适宜的，但这些区域提案的适宜性将由林业委员会决定，包括通过回应自然英格兰、环境署、历史英格兰、地方当局及其他相关利益相关者的意见。敏感性地图排除了所有不适宜种植的土地，包括城市区域、现有（及假定）林地以及被认为过于潮湿、多石、盐分过高的栖息地。这一目标是通过将敏感性地图限制在以下土地覆盖类型中实现的，这些类型基于最新的土地覆盖图更新：酸性草地、耕地及园艺、钙质草地、石南、石南草地、改良草地、中性草地。在3.0版本的完整敏感性地图、低敏感性地图及其变体中，定义不适宜和低、中、高敏感性林地创建的时空数据集及其单独层级的文档可在此处查阅：www.gov.uk/guidance/a-guide-to-forestry-commissions-sensitivity-maps-for-woodland-creation。属性包括：‘敏感性’= 土地被分配的林地创建敏感性级别；‘面积（公顷）’= 多边形的面积（公顷）。 lineage：这是这些层级的3.0版本，经过了多次迭代，新数据输入被添加，并修改了如何将这些数据作为林地创建敏感性处理的方式。这些是首次以开放数据形式发布的层级版本。