The exact position and height of trees in most areas of England in 2020 can be mapped accurately using free LiDAR data provided by the Environment Agency and free software. A good guess at the genus of each tree in that map can be made from their appearance at different seasons in Google Earth historical ‘satellite’ images. This leaves only a walk through the woodland to identify the species of any tree of particular interest. Low-cost drones with high-resolution cameras can be programmed to fly repeatedly to specified points in the air above woodland to follow phenological changes of trees ofany species of interest - the timing of their flowering, leafing out and leaf fall. These photos improve the tree identification beyond what can be achieved using Google Earth. We applied these techniques to ShrawleyWood, Worcestershire, and its neighbouring coppice called Shotgrove to achieve a starting point for a historical study of coppicemanagement in the wood extending back tothe fourteenth century. This article summarises some of the findings published in Shrawley Wood. History and natural history (Green et al., 2022).
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