Healthy well-planned and managed trees can live for hundreds of years but take decades to reach their full potential. With trees hailed as the backbone of green infrastructure, as ‘multi-tasking climate heroes’ and essential supports for biodiversity, and our own health and wellbeing, it’s vital to plan for our future tree resource.
The national forest strategy is critical to climate action, but, when it comes to trees ‘outside the forest’, Ireland has a blind spot: so little is known about them that it’s not currently possible to quantify the contribution of these trees towards sustainability goals.
Outside the forest, trees, woodlands and hedgerows improve the look and feel of towns and countryside, they cool and clean the air, provide shade, prevent flooding and soil erosion, store carbon dioxide and host wildlife both above and below ground. Studies consistently show that the longer trees live and the larger they grow, the greater their value to us, but we lack site-specific data to support conservation policies.
We tend to think of trees as growing, and dying naturally, but most are planted in situations that are far from natural and in conditions that stunt their growth and shorten their lives. A lack of practical knowledge (and education) about how trees grow risks damaging current and future efforts to expand the urban resource across the country.
And what of the existing resource? Ireland’s trees are at risk from climate change, disease, infrastructural and building development, poor management and premature aging. As a result, mature trees are slowly but surely disappearing from towns and countryside, few regulations protect them from removal.
Disease is also gradually transforming the Irish landscape. Within 20 years, ash (the most common native tree) will almost completely disappear. What will replace it? What about other big trees (eg beech) currently reaching their natural end of life? For the past 100+ years, little thought has been given to the future of Ireland’s trees outside the forest. There is no national policy for them, no statutory requirement for local policy, and no concerted plan for protection or renewal of the resource.
In times of climate change, biodiversity collapse, and urbanisation, questions about the future of trees (outside the forest) are urgent. This project seeks to gather expertise, and identify gaps in knowledge and in policy; it seeks to support development of an emerging area of research (into the roles, values and future of trees outside the forest), and to raise awareness of the need for better planning of, policy for and research into trees in urban situations (the urban forest) and rural ones (the informal forest).
Ultimately, we believe, all of Ireland’s trees , woodlands and hedgerows will eventually be considered as part of an interconnected, holistically-managed and invaluable resource, this project is a first step towards that distant goal.
Project team
- Sophia Meeres, UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy
- Brian Tobin, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science
- Noeleen Smyth, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science
- Ciaran Bennett, UCD Estate Services
- Ciaran Beattie, UCD Estate Services
- Tine Ningal, UCD School of Geography
- Gerald Mills, UCD School of Geography