6000 Years of Forest Landscapes and Sounds, United Kingdom Interactive

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Biodiversity, Nature, Wildlife, Climate Change, Global Change

Ed Hessler

The story of the world's woodlands is one of overwhelming decline, " writes Sophie Yeo for Inkcap Journal in the introduction to Six Thousand Years of Forests, an amazing visual and aural interactive featuring the declines in United Kingdom (UK).

Yen's short introduction concludes with this observation. "The primeval forests have given way to an intensively farmed and settled landscape. Today, just 13% of the UK is covered by woodland, of which only 2.5% is more than 400 years old. If this was ever a woodland nation, it is not anymore."

By scrolling you can "see how land use has changed across the last eight millennia." "Anthromes" short for  Anthropogenic Biomes, or Human Biomes, are the globally significant ecological patterns created by sustained interactions between humans and human patterns created by sustained interactions between humans and ecosystems, iincluding urban, village, cropland, rangeland and seminatural anthromes." (see here).

Viewers comments include words and phrases such as "Fabulous,:"a creative re-telling," and"Amazing." Oh yes, these and more accolades. One comment critical of the work must have run, not walked through the forest depictions," with Yeo responding "the second paragraph makes that very point, with a link to the very study that you have included in your comment." 

The Inkcap Journal is longform journalism about nature and conservation in Britain. Members can receive a free weekly digest every Friday on nature news in Britain. Yeah, I know that all this information about the journal is in the masthead of today's feature but if, like me, you wanted to start hiking, it is easily missed.  I lumbered right by it the first time.