A climate emergency has been declared by 74% of UK local authorities. The Government are responding to this by planting more trees to reduce carbon-dioxide in the air. But it is vital that they also realise the many other benefits that trees can provide, such as health, wellbeing, green infrastructure, and social amenity.

Most studies on urban trees neglect wider social and cultural values that cannot easily be valued. Consequently, we do not meaningfully account for the symbolic, heritage, spiritual, social, and cultural values of treescapes.

This problem is leading to protests arising around individual trees as a result – such as the Sheffield street trees. And pressures from business and housing developments are making the problem worse.

It is clear that local authorities need a vision of future societal needs and the forms of future trees and urban forests that might work.

Branching Out is a new project led by Loughborough University that aims to realise this vision. They will do this by developing new ways of mapping, predicting, and communicating social and cultural values to support robust, evidence-based decision making and management.