A landmark project has created one of the most comprehensive digital records of historic Scottish woodlands dating back 180 years.
The collaboration between The National Library of Scotland (NLS) and nature tech company Zulu Ecosystems has used machine learning to create a new digital layer which extracts all the woodland on the Ordnance Survey 1st edition maps, dating back to the 1840s.
The result - OS First Series Woodland Layer – accurately pinpoints the locations and extents of these historic woods and is available to view on the NLS website.
The project is open for collaboration - and the public is invited to contribute to the improvement of the layer by highlighting any missing woodlands. The identified changes will refine the layer ahead of its general availability.
Edward Asseily, CEO of Zulu Ecosystems, said: “The 1st edition Ordnance Survey maps published in the late 19th Century are a precious resource for locating areas of ancient woodland.
READ MORE: Phone masts will 'despoil' Highland wilderness, say locals in call for 'rethink'
"Previously, government agencies, woodland conservationists, and land managers have had to manually identify individual areas of woodland shown on these early maps. Now, we have a single digital layer showing Scotland's ancient woodlands.
"Once the layer has been refined, it will be freely downloadable to the public. Identifying these historic woods is crucial to understanding the scale of their decline so that we can accelerate their revival.”
Ancient woodlands are integral to Scotland’s history, culture and ecology. Their rich biodiversity and complex soil structure help support ecosystem connectivity and are important to fighting the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. However, they have suffered from overgrazing, deforestation and a changing climate, and together, these factors have led to their increasing decline.
Edward Asseily, CEO of Zulu Ecosystems, comments: “This window to our past helps to identify and prioritise areas with the highest potential for natural regeneration and shows where interventions are urgently needed to restore these once-thriving ecosystems.
"It also opens up new avenues for landowners to participate in woodland regeneration: Lost Woods are now eligible for carbon credits under the Woodland Carbon Code (WCC), another incentive for landowners and other stakeholders to regenerate nature at scale.”
For this project, Zulu Ecosystems extracted details of the woodland recorded in the NLS’s OS 6-inch 1st Edition Scotland maps (1843-1882), using the historic symbology used to classify deciduous woods, fir plantations and mixed woods.
Zulu Ecosystems then refined this data through a combination of machine learning (ML), post-processing techniques and manual verification to ensure accuracy across a large scale. When compared to present-day satellite imagery, it clearly shows the areas where ancient woodlands once stood.
Zulu Ecosystems have developed and donated this open access layer to contribute towards the conservation and protection of ancient woodland in Scotland.
Chris Fleet, from the National Library of Scotland, said: “We are very keen to share information from our map collections, and this collaboration has created an important new dataset showing woodland on Ordnance Survey 1st edition six-inch maps.
"We hope that the refinement and improvement of this woodland layer before its release as an open dataset will assist the wide range of people today who are interested in Scotland’s historic woodland.”
To explore and collaborate in the OS First Series Woodland Layer, locate ancient woodland in Scotland and compare it to today’s coverage, view the interactive map here
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here