Wild species are under growing pressure from a range of different threats. These include increased temperatures as a result of climate change and new pests and diseases arriving as a consequence of global trade and travel. Many trees around the world currently face such threats, causing them to become stressed and rendering them less able to perform functions that we all benefit from, such as capturing and storing carbon dioxide or reducing flooding risk by decreasing surface water run-off. Ultimately, individuals that are unable to cope with these threats will decline and die, which can not only place whole tree species at risk but also the associated biodiversity that depends on these species. However, despite being large and often long-lived organisms, we know that tree species have the potential to adapt quickly to new challenges in their environment. Large differences between the DNA of individuals, structural variants, may be particularly important for rapid adaptation because they can result in more dramatic changes in phenotype than is the case for small changes to DNA. Until recently it has not been possible to properly evaluate the contribution of SVs to genetic adaptation at the population level - advances in genome sequencing and analysis methods mean this ambitious goal can now be pursued. This project will look at whether structural variants play a key role in how species are able to rapidly adapt to new threats. To test this, we will use the case of ash dieback disease (ADB) in native UK populations of European ash, which presents an exceptional opportunity to analyse the genomic changes involved in evolutionary response to newly imposed sources of stress. The European ash tree is one of the most common woodland trees in the UK and, in last ten years, has suffered severe damage from the invasive fungus that causes ADB. Although most ash eventually die once they are infected with the disease, a small percentage of individuals are resistant and remain healthy even when surrounded by diseased and dying trees. We will sample multiple natural UK populations of ash trees where both healthy and diseased adults that predate the ADB epidemic and healthy and diseased juveniles that established since the disease arrived are present. We will perform whole genome sequencing for hundreds of individuals from each population and also score them for their level of resistance to the disease. Using these data, first we will test for associations between SVs and resistance to ADB to estimate the relative contribution of SVs to resistance, compared with that of single nucleotide variants (SNPs). For SVs or SNPs significantly associated with resistance, we will test for allele frequency shifts between generations in each population and analyse if this is associated with increased resistance to ADB among the younger cohort - a sign that the species is starting to adapt to the disease. This will allow us to establish the comparative importance of SVs for ongoing adaptation. We will then examine the relationship between disease pressure and SV formation rate. Stress may stimulate an elevated rate of SV formation, which by exposing more adaptive mutations to selection could provide a path for rapid adaptive evolution. Finally, we will determine if the accuracy with which genomic data can be used to predict individuals with the greatest level of resistance to the disease (genomic prediction) can be significantly improved by incorporating information on SVs. By advancing understanding of the role of SVs in adaptive evolution to newly imposed selection pressures, and through developing effective strategies for improving genomic prediction, this project will also enhance our ability to predict which individuals are most likely to survive future threats and help to inform actions to manage natural populations for increased resilience and protect biodiversity.

This knowledge exchange will bring together the research of several Future of UK Treescapes projects and apply it to a forest and woodland creation project - The Forth Climate Forest (FCF), which will act as a case study, to improve understanding of how to maximise the benefits of forest and woodland expansion and creation through better public engagement and involvement. We will synthesise the research of the Treescapes projects Connected Treescapes, TreE_PlaNat, AFFORE3ST and Branching Out and apply them to community engagement workshops, with the aim of developing and testing new and dynamic ways to involve local communities in tree planting and woodland creation and expansion. We will produce practice notes for policy makers and practitioners and resources for the public will apply Treescapes research to maximise the benefits gained from forest and woodland creation and expansion. FCF is a new, 10-year project in the Forth Valley area of Scotland aiming to increase canopy cover, forest area and connectivity, provide carbon storage for climate change mitigation, support biodiversity and provide diverse ecosystem services. It centres on communities, aiming to be implemented both for and with local people. FCF is an ideal case study because of its relatively large, regional scale, the diverse communities its range encompasses and because of the range of partners involved in its implementation, allowing us to explore a variety of perspectives and knowledge types and to produce results with broad application. Maximising the benefits of tree planting can be difficult and while forest creation projects aspire to effective community engagement, local support can be variable - forest and woodland creation can involve radical landscape change, and this can lead to conflict with local people. This could be avoided if practices to consult with and involve locals were improved. In this project, we will work with the FCF and partners in The Woodland Trust, Scottish Forestry and Stirling and Clackmannanshire councils to understand the benefits and challenges associated with forest and woodland creation for different public and community needs, including reductions in pollution exposure and well-being benefits. We will work with local community groups and will explore new ways of communicating to understand and integrate diverse public perspectives. To achieve this, we will: 1) facilitate an initial workshop to synthesise research across the collaborating Treescapes projects and understand how best to apply this to the needs of afforestation projects, using the FCF and partners as example stakeholders. 2) run 3 field-based workshops with local communities where knowledge and perspectives on forest and woodland expansion and creation will be exchanged between researchers, project partners and local people. These workshops will each have a main theme (Histories, biodiversity and multiple benefits; Service provision in urban environments; Cultural and social connections), as directed by the leading Treescapes project. 3) host a final workshop with all collaborators, projects partners and stakeholders where the results of the synthesis and field workshops will be summarized and finalised into a plan for 3 outputs. Our findings will be communicated through two practice notes on: 1. managing benefits and challenges of forest and woodland expansion and creation and 2. best practices for community engagement and via a website and information leaflet on the benefits of woodland creation and expansion made for and with the local community. This project will increase the impact and reach of the participating Treescapes projects by providing them with new opportunities to engage with members of the public and to apply their results to a new regional example while directly influencing policy makers and practitioners at local and national scales.

Reimagining the Law of the Forest explores human-forest relationships of rights and responsibility at a time of political awakening to the place of English woodlands in the public consciousness. It comes in the year of the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, and in the wake of an abandoned government proposal to privatise the entire Public Forest Estate and a subsequent independent public consultation on the future of English woodlands. The consultation advocated the development of a new 'woodland culture', framed in terms of market-based incentives for private landowners to provide ecosystem services; while the original proposal to privatise revealed how little legal protection there is for English public forests at present. The project aims to deepen and re-evaluate our understanding of human-forest relations for two main reasons. First, in the context of national and international priorities on sustainable development the project seeks to draw lessons from legal history and philosophy to contribute towards shaping the future design of forest law and policy for long-term environmental sustainability. It will provide the knowledge to improve the legal protection that forests and woodlands lack. Second, it aims to increase public awareness of the intrinsic and extrinsic value of forests as biodiverse natural habitats that are also rich in resources, cultural and social significance, and essential for the stability of the Earth's climate. The project findings will contribute to the new woodland culture that the public consultation said was needed, and to ensuring that this culture is based on legal protection and shared cultural values towards forests and woodlands. The project will analyse the history of human-forest relations in English law and society over the centuries, which has been characterised by shifts in power and property relations that have driven plunder more than preservation. Today, forests in England represent only around 10% of total land area, compared with 15% 1,000 years ago, and a current European average of 37% (Forestry Commission statistics 2014). Through archival and empirical research, the project will explore the historical basis of human-forest relations in England, the cultural, legal and social factors that have led to the contemporary moral crisis over public forests and woodlands, and the tension between the extent of human needs and rights to exploit forests and our responsibilities to protect them. The project also re-evaluates our relationship with forests drawing upon an emergent area in legal theory known as Wild Law, or Earth Jurisprudence. These ecocentric approaches see nature as an object of human responsibility and hold the potential for synergy between the public rejection of privatisation of the Public Forest Estate and market-based approaches to environmental governance. They have been most influential at an international level in UN General Assembly debates on the Sustainable Development Goals and can be applied practically, in the context of climate change, environmental stewardship, the protection of indigenous peoples' rights, and rethinking property regimes. However, as an emergent area of study, little of this research has focused on Europe, or England and the UK. The project is unique in its interdisciplinary approach to exploring human-forest relations in the context of culture, law and society throughout English history, and the educational and policy potential this offers. Beyond academia, the outcomes of this project will be of interest to policymakers, third sector forest and woodland conservation organisations, forest education institutions, landowners of private woodlands and the general public.

The UK research councils are nearing the end of a five-year programme of research called 'Future of UK Treescapes' which aims to 'understand the environmental and societal benefits of landscapes in which trees play a significant role'. To gain maximum benefit from this research the results need to be synthesized and made available, using appropriate language, and using a range of formats, to relevant stakeholders. The Tree of Knowledge (ToK) project is a knowledge exchange project that will synthesize work from three projects (DiversiTree, MEMBRA and newLEAF) within the Future of UK Treescapes Programme, communicate the results to forest managers, policy makers and the public and in liaison with stakeholders co-develop guidance on how to implement the results both in forest management and in policy. The three projects ToK will synthesis cover different aspects of forest resilience. Resilience is the ability of a system, such as a forest, to recover from a disturbance. Currently the UK government is encouraging an increase in forest cover as part of its plans to store more carbon, to mitigate climate change. However, many of the UK's trees are threatened by climate change and a range of pests and diseases, which might limit their ability to contribute to carbon storage and the wide range of other benefits delivered by trees. We therefore need to make our forests resilient to these future threats. Resilience is delivered by multiple interacting factors, but a key parameter is diversity. More diverse systems are generally more resilient. Diversity occurs at many different levels. Species diversity is the number of different tree species within an area and is the research focus of the DiversiTree project. Genetic diversity is variation among individuals within a species and is the focus of the newLEAF project. Epigenetics are the biochemical changes within a tree in response to stresses during its life and may be described as the 'memory' of the tree, this is the focus of the MEMBRA project. Forest managers are advised that diversity increases resilience, but the practical implementation of diversity concepts can be complex and nuanced and may involve trade-offs between tree species, genetic diversity and epigenetic memory. In addition, genetic diversity and epigenetics are hard to visualize and interpret on the ground. The ToK project will make species diversity, genetic diversity, and epigenetic memory, more visible to forest managers, policy makers, and the public. It will explain why these concepts are important to understand and provide stakeholders with improved knowledge to evaluate diversity and resilience in the context of their own forests, such that decision-making is easier. There are three stages to ToK. First, we bring together researchers from DiversiTree, newLEAF and MEMBRA to synthesize current knowledge of the benefits, risks and uncertainties of species diversity, genetic diversity, and epigenetic memory for increasing resilience. We will identify consistent messages from across these projects, reducing the risk that stakeholders will receive conflicting information from three projects which ultimately all have the same aim of increasing forest resilience. Second, we will work with forest practitioners and policy makers to co-develop outputs from the synthesis that meet real world needs. Finally, the project will leave a range of co-developed outputs. Our research notes and webinars (recorded for future use) will provide practical guidance for practitioners on how to include species diversity, genetic diversity, and epigenetic memory within their forest planning. Our policy brief will provide guidance on results from the project that policy makers need to consider. Finally, our animated film, blogs, infographics, and podcast will increase the visibility, understanding and raise awareness of species diversity, genetic diversity, and epigenetic memory amongst the public.

The UK government plans to increase woodland cover as part of its plans to store more carbon, to mitigate climate change. However, many of the UK's trees are threatened by climate change and a range of pests and diseases, which might limit their ability to contribute to carbon storage and the wide range of other benefits delivered by woodlands. We therefore need to make our woodlands resilient to these future threats. Resilience is the ability of a system, such as a woodland, to recover from a disturbance. One commonly proposed approach to increase the resilience of woods is to increase their tree diversity. Thus, spreading the risk amongst many different trees, as we don't know exactly how each tree species will respond to climate change, nor what threats from pests and diseases they may face decades into the future. However, woodland managers have different perceptions of diversity, and how management may best deliver it, and we know that different tree species will support the woodland ecosystem in different ways. Therefore, it is important to combine stakeholders' knowledge with ecological knowledge to identify which tree species and management approaches best deliver diversification that increases resilience. DiversiTree focuses on woods dominated by two conifer species, Scots Pine and Sitka Spruce, as in the year to March 2021 54% of all new woodland was coniferous. Scots Pine is the UK's only native conifer of economic significance. It is planted for timber production but is also the dominant species in the culturally iconic native Caledonian pinewoods. Scots Pine is at risk from the tree disease Dothistroma. Sitka Spruce is not native to Britain but is our most economically valuable tree species and is at risk from invasive bark beetles and climate change. This project addresses four knowledge gaps related to the diversification of woodlands: 1) How do stakeholders understand forest diversity, their diversification strategies, and their visions and ambitions for diverse future forests? 2) Are the microbes found on the leaves of trees more diverse in woodlands with mixed tree species and does this help trees to better defend themselves against diseases? 3) How may diversification of tree species within a wood allow the continued support of woodland biodiversity? 4) How do we implement and communicate management strategies to increase woodland resilience? To address these knowledge gaps, we work across disciplines bringing together ecologists, microbiologists, social scientists, and woodland managers. The Woodland Trust is embedded at the heart of our project to enable us to co-develop and check the feasibility of our results with practitioners. Results from interviews with woodland managers, focus groups and analyses of policy documents, will be used to improve knowledge of the options for woodland diversification, and both the enthusiasm for, and capacity to, implement diversification strategies. The microbes on leaves are important for plant health. Utilizing existing long-term experiments, we will examine the microbes on the leaves of Scots Pine grown in monocultures and in mixed woods. We will assess if the diversity of microbes on a leaf increases as the diversity of tree species increases, and whether this enables the trees to resist existing diseases. Surprising we don't have lists of which species use which trees. This information is required if we are to plant trees that will continue to support woodland biodiversity. We will collate data on the biodiversity hosted by Scots Pine and Sitka Spruce and assess which other tree species could also support the same biodiversity. Finally, we bring the results together to co-develop with practitioners, management strategies for diversification and case studies illustrating how the results can be implemented. The results will be shared via videos, podcasts, social media, and practitioner notes in addition to publications in the scientific literature.