Professor Paul Smith - Awarded The RSFS Award 2019 Neil Findlay Memorial Trophy

Paul Smith , Professor of Official Statistics, Department of Social Statistics and Demography (SSD) has, by a unanimous decision of the judging panel of the Royal Scottish Forestry Society, won the 2019 Neil Findlay Memorial Trophy for his paper ‘Shelterbelt trials in the Outer Hebrides after 50 years: a study in competition, survival and succession’, published in the autumn 2019 edition of the Scottish Forestry.

The Neil Findlay Memorial Trophy is awarded for for papers that are ‘not detailed accounts of conventional forest management, forest protection or research, but portray wider perspectives of people’s involvement with trees, woodland and the environment’.

Shelterbelt trials in the Outer Hebrides after fifty years: a study in competition, survival and succession

Smith, Paul A. (2019) Shelterbelt trials in the Outer Hebrides after fifty years: a study in competition, survival and succession. Scottish Forestry , 72 (2), 23-32.
Record type: Article

Abstract

Shelterbelt trials were established in North Uist and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1963 as part of a programme to evaluate the suitability of a wide range of species to grow in extremely exposed conditions. They were supplemented by further planting in the first few years, and evaluated in 1972, 1975 and 1990. The sites were revisited in 2016‐8 and the survival and condition of species on the plots evaluated as far as possible. The planting plans are partly reconstructed. All plots were very densely planted, suffered from windthrow and were useless for a timber crop, but succeeded well as shelter and have acted as nurse areas for a range of self‐seeded species.

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