ForES article for British Ecological Society Special Interest Group on 'The Natural Capital of Irish Forests'

The ForES project team's Owen Small recently published an article in the BES Forest Ecology Group, a British Ecological Society Special Interest Group on The Natural Capital of Irish Forests. Read an extract here and access the full article with citations HERE.

If we look back 10,000 years ago, we could follow the journey of a red squirrel scurrying the forest canopy in what is now Kerry. The squirrel moves across ash and hazel in a beautiful woodland landscape that - less than two millennia prior - was buried beneath glacial ice. Remarkably, this adventurous rodent could feasibly travel all the way to the tip of what is now Co. Donegal without ever touching the ground.

In stark contrast to a rich, sylvan heritage, as of 2022 the National Forest Inventory estimates only 11.6% of Ireland’s land area is forest. A mere 808,848 hectares, this number is dwarfed by other European woodlands. In the rest of the European Union (EU), woodlands must span at least 0.5 hectares to be defined as “forested” in land cover data. For Ireland, our small percentage of woodland has resulted in an adjusted definition. Per the Forestry Act 2014, a minimum area of only 0.1 hectares is needed to define a “forest” in land area statistics.

How could such a heavily forested island make such a drastic transition?

A few centuries following our squirrel’s journey, humans arrived, but these Mesolithic people relied on and revered their forests. It wasn’t until about 6,000 years ago, when Neolithic farmers settled the island, that an era of deforestation and land transformation began. Compounded by contemporary anthropogenic activity and colonialism, Ireland’s lush temperate rainforests and upland woodlands dwindled to the state we see today.

Understanding this history—and the gradual, yet severe, change this wonderful green island underwent—emphasises how essential the forests we have are. Our woodlands don’t simply provide timber. They provide a suite of ecosystem services - the various benefits, tangible and intangible, humans derive from these environments. With extreme loss of forests comes a loss of physical and societal benefits.

Nature, timber and people... cyclists in Ticknock forest in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, courtesy of Coillte

Beyond the cultural and ecological degradation, this lack of woodlands has also given Ireland a tremendous disadvantage in meeting EU goals under the Nature Restoration Law. Ireland’s own Forestry Strategy 2023-2030 aims to address this, explicitly highlighting key values of forests: forests for Climate, for Nature, for Wood, for People, and for Economy & Rural Development. As we move forward in this new era of legislative focus, forest owners and managers need methods to conduct valuations of their sites and forecast the benefits their woodlands provide. They’ll need tools to assist their management to not simply focus on timber productivity, but a holistic approach for optimising the value of a forest.

This is where ForES, a joint research project with Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, enters the conversation. Leveraging natural capital accounting and statistical modelling, ForES assesses forest ecosystems and aims to provide resources to inform forest management that optimises ecosystem services centred on the values for wood, climate, nature, and people.

What is Natural Capital Accounting?

In the context of ForES, natural capital accounting (NCA) is the use of Ecosystem Accounting methods set forth by the United Nations (UN) statistical framework: System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA). Despite what the second “E” in SEEA stands for, our project focuses on the intrinsic value of forests to humans, not the monetary. What are forests providing people physically, emotionally and environmentally? What ecosystem services can we derive from an environment?

In general, ecosystem accounting is applied at large scale, assessing countries or regions. The Irish Natural Capital Accounting for Sustainable Environments (INCASE) project sought to apply the framework at a catchment scale. Following suit, ForES employed a novel approach of using ecosystem accounting at site scale. Working with stakeholders in Irish forestry, ForES set out to track - at site-level - four prioritised ecosystem services: wood provisioning, climate regulation, recreation services, and nature provisioning.

Scenario comparison... Input examples on screen of the ForES Ecosystem Services tool in development

On our 25 forest sites, we first developed Extent accounts, mapping what ecosystems are present, and then Condition accounts assessing the quality of those ecosystems. Both are what’s known as stock accounts. We’re now in the process of developing our Ecosystem Service accounts, or flow accounts, showing the supply of these services and their use. This stock and flow system is key to the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting framework. Determine the asset and its condition (stock) and track the use (flow) of services.

So, we have methodology to see what is present and what has been at a forest site. If accounts are robust enough, this information can forecast changes over time. But what if data is limited? What if a forester wants to adjust what services their site provides and see how different changes will impact different services? In the absence of strong, data-driven accounts, how can we look forward and inform management to optimise the ecosystem services a site provides?

ForES developed a predictive tool that not only overcomes the absence of reliable data but is widely applicable and usable for Irish foresters and forest managers. The tool uses a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model informed by expert opinion of forestry and forest ecology professionals. Read more on the BES site HERE.