Ancient and other veteran trees are a vital and treasured part of our history, and our natural and cultural landscape, and Britain is thought to have the greatest number of ancient trees in northern Europe. The Ancient Tree Forum seeks to secure the long term future of these ecosystems through promoting best management and conservation practice, lobbying governments over their recognition and protection, encouraging research, and increasing people’s enjoyment of old trees.
Ancient Tree Forum
OTISS provides two predefined templates for surveying Veteran trees.
Please note that these templates are only available with the OTISS Premium Tree Safety subscription. The Standard subscription would allow you to customise the survey form yourself to add many of these fields and dropdown options.
Configuring the survey
On the TreeSafety Customise Survey webpage, use the Survey Templates button to select the one of the options below.
Veteran Tree Specialist Survey
- Based on the method developed by English Nature as part of the Veteran Trees Initiative.
- See Specialist Survey Method for a full description.
- We have used the same terminology, but have adapted the layout a bit to fit within the OTISS survey forms and recording mechanisms.
- This template can be used to do a Level 1 Simple Survey, Level 2 Generic Survey or Level 3 Specialist Survey, simply by filling in or ignoring sections of the form as required.
Veteran Tree Assessment
- A simpler assessment from the Ancient Tree Forum.
- Based on this PDF.
- We have used the terminology from the PDF where applicable, but also borrowed some from the Veteran Trees Initiative above.
Once you have selected the template, you are then free to edit the fields and further customise the survey form to your own requirements.
Veteran Tree Reports.
On the TreeSafety spreadsheet page, we have developed some specialised Excel reports that correspond to the above templates.
Any suggestions?
OTISS is constantly developing to suit our users’ requirements. Please contact us if you have suggestions for features or options that you would like to see.