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

“杰出自然美地区的未来树篱”是一个合作项目，汇集了农业研究人员、景观专业人员、国家机构和当地利益相关者的工作，重点关注一个独特的受保护景观：奇尔特恩山。与英国其他aonb一样，该地区的特色之一是它的树木，它由最典型的山毛榉林地组成，但也包括英国最大的原生盒子。在Chilterns指定的优先栖息地中，88%是落叶林地，在其边界内的17,588公顷林地中，9,830公顷（59%）是古老的。通过计划扩展AONB的边界（自然英格兰法定咨询，2024年），可以立即支持这些林地的扩张。“英国树木的未来”有三个关键主题：全面理解英国林地的形式、价值和功能；探索发展的障碍和途径；提高英国树木对全球压力的抵御能力。这三件事目前对奇尔特恩夫妇来说都具有紧迫的意义。对于FTAONB，来自雷丁大学的三名研究人员与Chilterns保护委员会一起，共同设计了一个围绕这些紧迫挑战和机遇的知识交流计划。他们的计划以一系列研讨会为中心，在研讨会上，双方将向一个新的扩展网络介绍他们更广泛的合作者，该网络由树木逃逸研究人员、景观从业者和保护/非政府组织专业人士组成。这些讲习班的知识交流将进一步扩大，至关重要的是，通过FTAONB与难以接触的农业和土地管理部门的专业人员协商，项目的更大议程最终取决于他们的参与。此外，该项目的设计使其特定于景观的知识需求和研究规定的识别可以从Chilterns的当地背景扩展到其他45个英国aonb的更大的国家背景。FTAONB项目小组将在其每个合作阶段采用编写、协商和修订的迭代过程编制一系列声明文件和信息工具。第一阶段将产生一份初步的研究需求说明，随后是第一次讲习班的练习笔记，详细阐述为一份有吸引力和有影响力的信息图表文件。在第二阶段，我们将在与当地利益相关者协商后（由CCB通过其农场集群计划提供便利）部署信息图表实践说明，并根据这些对话寻求修改和扩展它们。在第三阶段，我们将评估将练习笔记扩展到更一般的英国树辞上下文的范围，最后将英国树辞研究应用程序的工具包文档原型化。该工具包将成为一个可搜索的在线知识中心的核心，其中包含有关英国树木保护区扩展和保护的教育材料，并将在树木委员会网站上托管。对于CCB来说，FTAONB工作的遗产是将其纳入Chilterns AONB 2025-2030管理计划的材料，并将为新的Chilterns林地战略文件奠定基础。

'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.