Ancient Trees of the UK

The Ancient Tree Inventory is a citizen science dataset project managed and owned by the Woodland Trust, aiming to collect information on the oldest and most important trees in the UK & Ireland region.

What can we learn from this dataset? My aim was to compile interactive visualisations which address:

• Rate of recording – can we identify areas where perhaps awareness of the inventory could be improved, to encourage further recording?

• Species patterns – do certain species favour certain areas, or show clusters in certain habitats? Do we see more ancient specimen within one species or another?

• Accessibility – do we see patterns in accessibility of our oldest trees geographically, be it on private/public land or in given surroundings?

• Symbiotic/other relationships – can we infer which species favour or create favourable conditions for other organisms such as epiphytes or fungi? Do we see an impact to the growth of those trees which are associated with other organisms?

Along the way I found that only 20% of trees had a form of protection listed, 5 species make up 70% of records, and more than half of trees had at least one epiphyte growing on them. Most significant, however, was the finding that the majority of records were in the South of England - showing patterns in inventory recording - where do we need to increase awareness? - but also highlighting the nature depletion of our overall landscape.

Check out my GitHub repo to see more detail on the project, design, EDA and ETL/Tableau build, or visit the interactive dashboard on Tableau Public to explore more of the findings!