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The Project
 

The project brings together different expertise across the academy, policy and practice to test the thesis that the effective future management of diseases affecting trees is as much about memory and policy learning as it is prediction and risk assessment. more..

 

Specific objectives are:

1 To draw on archival research, semi-structured interviews and international experience to assess the scientific, environmental and policy legacy of Dutch Elm Disease (DED) and its relevance to present day concerns surrounding Sudden Oak Death (SOD) and other present day tree disease systems in the UK; 
2 To use a suite of modelling techniques to further explore the environmental repercussions of the DED outbreak and to visualise alternative landscape and biodiversity outcomes for SOD;
3 To undertake a stated preference survey within selected DED and SOD study areas, in combination with cognitive interviews and group work, to estimate the wider public willingness to pay to recover some of the landscape and biodiversity losses due to DED and to prevent future loss due to SOD; 
4 To analyse the policy implications of the work by convening a jury-style enquiry in order to reach verdicts on the experience of DED and the likelihood of an epidemic of SOD; To use the outputs from this exercise to stimulate further public debate about the assessment, management and communication of risk in relation to tree disease epidemics in the UK.

read about the approaches taken..