Large-Scale Mapping Supports Climate Change Resear

07 September 2010, 10:26am

Cambridge, 08 September 2010: The GeoInformation® Group announces the supply of UKMap, a highly detailed and feature-rich mapping database, to Forest Research for testing the latest climate change models.

Forest Research, the Forestry Commission’s research agency, is Great Britain's principal organisation for forestry and tree related research. With climate change being one of the biggest challenges facing the Commission, Forest Research is tasked with exploring its impact on the UK’s urban tree population and its potential effect on the movement of high-risk organisms through the landscape.

UKMap was acquired to provide the accurate location of trees, adjacent land use and the location and height of surrounding buildings - all significant aspects in the modelling of the changing climate and spatial arrangement of trees and greenspace throughout urban areas.

Andrew Brunt from the Ecology Division at Forestry Research, comments, “The GIS spatial modelling we are undertaking uses the Oak Processionary (a moth that poses a health hazard) as an exemplar that requires highly detailed and accurate data on the environment. Although Forestry Commission has many datasets of its own, UKMap provides us with various cost-effective sources of data that are key to our research”.

This study will undertake an investigation using empirical and published data to explore how this moth and other potential pests might migrate through urban environments in relation to the location of green space, its connectivity, the structural complexity of the built environment and climate.

This research is just beginning. To find out more, please contact Andy Brunt of Forest Research at: andrew.brunt@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

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