CCFG will be hosting their next webinar – Underplanting of conifers in Britain – with Victoria Stokes – on Thursday 23rd May 2024 4-5pm.
Underplanting is a relatively little-used technique for establishing trees while avoiding the disadvantages of clearfelling and may become increasingly important where a change of species is desirable. This webinar will report results from an underplanting experiment in the long-running CCF trial area at Clocaenog Forest in North Wales. Survival and growth of five different conifer species planted under a mature Sitka spruce overstorey will be compared. Impacts of the subsequent thinning operations and the final overstorey removal on survival of the underplanted seedlings will be presented, and responses of the five species to the removal of the overstorey 9 years after planting will be examined. Some operational “lessons learned” will also be highlighted.
Victoria is a Senior Scientist in the Silviculture and Wood Properties Science Group at Forest Research. She has over 20 years’ experience in carrying out research on management of Britain’s forests to increase resilience to climate change and biotic threats, whilst maintaining productivity. She leads research on Upland Silviculture, focussing on management techniques which increase tree species diversity and stand age structure, such as Continuous Cover Forestry. She has contributed to many collaborative projects and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.
To book your place please visit this link.
has published a report including several case studies of Continuous Cover Forestry and the financial obstacles they faced. To read more, follow 
The talk will describe the main silvicultural systems we can use to manage forests and give a personal view about their application in Britain. In addition, the talk will give a summary of a the main risks to forests from climate change, the possible impacts and the evidence base for how the use of continuous cover can help mitigate these risks. Finally, the talk will consider how best to communicate ‘how to do continuous cover’ to new audiences. Along the way Gary will be asking the audience some questions, so have a paper and pen handy and be honest with yourself when the answers are revealed!
Research until September 23. The main thrust of his work has been applied silvicultural research and this has led to over 50 papers in peer reviewed journals, 16 Forestry Commission publications and over 50 articles in professional publications communicating the results of research. For the last ten years his work has focussed on alternative approaches to management and continuous cover silviculture. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research, published by Oxford University Press for 20 years. After retiring from Forest Research he divides his time between working as the Commissioning Editor for the Quarterly Journal of Forestry, Chairing the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forest Institute and continuing his association with FR as a Research Fellow.
Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF), i.e. forest management based on ecological principles, has been introduced to Ireland and the UK more than twenty years ago. Whilst in the early days identifying simple and robust methods of transforming plantations to woodlands with more complex structures were the primary concern, ongoing climate change and the recent energy crisis have added new challenges of managing for CCF. Many policymakers including the authors of the recent EU forest strategy and of associated recommendations proposed by the European Forest Institute see CCF as a major instrument for mitigating adverse effects of climate change. In this context, carbon forestry has become a major buzzword and a research field in its own right, however, it is still largely unknown how exactly existing woodlands should be managed for optimising carbon sequestration. Questions like “Is carbon forestry part of or a concept separate from CCF?” or “Can carbon forestry be carried out along with other management objectives or is a special focus required?” are hotly debated. Ongoing climate change and all its localised realisations such as spontaneous gales, droughts, floods and insect calamities can always bring the sudden end to any CCF woodland that we have transformed for many years with great effort. In that situation we may be left with little more than bare ground and methods are needed to establish new CCF
woodlands from scratch. CCF from scratch may also include the use of coppice systems, particularly the use of coppice with standards and coppice selection systems. Such system can contribute to satisfying the current demand for sustainable energy whilst creating diverse habitats and providing high-quality timber at the same time.
