Future Treescapes in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: Expansion and Resilience in the Chiltern Hills and Beyond

“杰出自然美景中的未来树”是一个合作项目，汇集了农业研究人员、景观专业人士、国家机构和当地利益相关者的工作，专注于一种独特的受保护景观：奇尔特恩山。与英国其他AONBs一样，该地区的一个标志性特征是它的树梢，它最具特色的是山毛榉林地，但包括英国最大的原生盒子覆盖范围。奇尔特恩人指定的优先栖息地88%是落叶林地，在其边界内的17588公顷林地中，9830公顷(59%)是古老的。现在就有机会通过计划中的AONB边界扩展来支持这些林地的扩展(自然英格兰法律咨询，2024年)。《英国森林逃生的未来》有三个关键主题：全面了解英国林地的形式、价值和功能；探索林地扩张的障碍和途径；增强英国森林逃生在全球压力下的韧性。这三个问题目前对奇尔特恩夫妇都具有紧迫的意义。对于FTAONB，来自雷丁大学的Treaway研究人员已与奇尔特恩斯保护委员会合作，围绕这些紧迫的挑战和机遇共同设计了一项知识交流计划。他们的计划集中在一系列讲习班上，在讲习班上，双方将向新扩大的树丛研究人员、景观从业人员和保护/非政府组织专业人员介绍他们更广泛的合作者圈子。这些讲习班上的知识交流将进一步扩大，关键是通过FTAONB与农业和土地管理部门难以接触到的专业人员进行磋商，项目的更大议程最终取决于他们的参与。此外，该项目的设计是为了使其特定景观的知识需求和研究规定的确定能够从奇尔特恩的当地背景扩大到其他45个联合王国AONBs的更大的国家背景。FTAONB项目小组将在其每个协作阶段编制一系列声明文件和信息工具，采用编制、协商和修订的迭代过程。第一阶段将产生一份初步的研究需求说明，然后是第一期研讨会的练习笔记，并详细阐述为一份有吸引力和影响力的信息图表文件。在第二阶段，我们会与当地的持份者磋商(由商业罪案调查科透过其农场联网计划提供协助)，部署资料图表作业备考，并因应这些对话修订和推广这些作业备考。在第三阶段，我们将评估将练习笔记扩大到更一般的英国Trescape环境的范围，最后制作英国Trescape研究应用的工具包文档的原型。这个工具包将成为一个可搜索的在线知识中心的核心，其中包含关于扩大和保护英国树枝的教育材料，将托管在树议会网站上。对于建行来说，其在FTAONB上工作的遗产是它将提供给奇尔特恩斯AONB 2025-2030年管理计划的材料，以及它将为新的奇尔特恩斯森林战略文件奠定基础。

'Future Treescapes in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty' is a collaborative project that brings together the work of agricultural researchers, landscape professionals, national agencies, and local stakeholders to focus on a distinctive protected landscape: the Chiltern Hills. As in other UK AONBs, one of the area's defining features is its treescape, which is made up most characteristically of beech woodland, but includes the UK's largest coverage of native box. 88% of the Chilterns' designated priority habitats are deciduous woodland, and of the 17,588 woodland hectares within its boundaries 9,830ha (59%) are ancient. There are immediate opportunities to support the expansion of these woodlands through the planned extension of the AONB's boundaries (Natural England statutory consultation, 2024). 'Future of UK Treescapes' has three key themes: understanding holistically the form, value and function of UK woodland; exploring barriers and pathways towards its expansion; increasing the resilience of UK treescapes to global pressures. All three are currently of urgent significance to the Chilterns. For FTAONB, treescape investigators from the University of Reading have joined with the Chilterns Conservation Board to co-design a programme of knowledge exchange around these pressing challenges and opportunities. Their plan centres on a series of workshops at which both partners will introduce their wider circles of collaborators to a newly extended network of treescape researchers, landscape practitioners, and conservation/NGO professionals. The exchange of knowledge at these workshops will be broadened further, crucially, through FTAONB's consultation with hard-to-reach professionals in the agricultural and land management sectors, upon whose involvement the larger agendas of the project ultimately depend. The project is designed, furthermore, so that its landscape-specific identification of knowledge requirements and research provisions can be scaled up from the local context of the Chilterns to the larger, national context of the other 45 UK AONBs. The FTAONB project team will produce a series of statement documents and information tools at each of its collaborative stages, using an iterative process of composition, consultation and revision. Stage 1 will produce an initial research needs statement, followed by practice notes from the first workshop, elaborated into an attractive and impactful infographic document. At Stage 2 we will deploy the infographic practice notes in consultations with local stakeholders (facilitated by the CCB through their farm cluster programme), and seek to revise and extend them in the light of these conversations. At Stage 3 we will assess the scope for scaling up the practice notes to more general UK treescape contexts, finally prototyping a toolkit document of UK Treescape research applications. This toolkit will form the centrepiece of a searchable, online knowledge hub, containing educational materials on the expansion and preservation of UK treescapes, to be hosted on the Tree Council website.For the CCB, the legacy of its work on FTAONB is the material that it will feed into the Chilterns AONB 2025-2030 management plan, and the foundations it will lay for a new Chilterns Woodland Strategy document.