Establishment survey
Survey a young planting or regeneration plot by plot — survival and stocking by species against the stand’s establishment profile, beating-up per species, height growth, weeds, browsing and damage, tree guards, and (optionally) woodland character — and get On track, Needs attention or Failing with the rules behind it.
- For
- Consultant foresters
- Time
- 8 minutes to read
- Where
- Field app — Establishment survey; web — Setup (target), Results › Establishment survey, Plan
- Updated
On this page
When to use it
The Establishment survey provisional is recommended in Ireland and Great Britain for a young planting — a stand set up as afforestation or reforestation and established 15 years ago or less (the stand’s Establishment and Year established in its desk setup). It is never given to a stand by default: choose it on the stand’s Setup under the Establishment topic. For older stands use Natural regeneration.
It answers the questions of an establishment inspection: are enough trees alive and free growing, which species need beating up and how many, are the trees growing, are weeds, deer or guards holding them back, and is the mix still the one planted.
Choose the establishment profile
Every stand is read against an establishment profile: the minimum stocking, the species-mix rules and the extra checks of a grant scheme, a regulation or a CCF approach. Set it in the stand’s target for the Establishment topic (Setup › Methods & targets). Leave it on Suggested and the app proposes one from the stand’s establishment, species composition and country, and says why in every result — a suggestion only; you choose.
| Group | Profiles | Minimum (examples) |
|---|---|---|
| Ireland — afforestation | Native woodland (FT1–FT4), FT5 emergent, FT6 oak/beech, FT7 broadleaf, FT8 agroforestry, FT10 CCF, FT11 mixed, FT12 Sitka | 90 % of 2,500/ha free growing by the 2nd instalment (year 4); FT8 400/ha |
| Ireland — reforestation | Conifer, broadleaf, mixed, CCF, biodiversity & water | 90 % of 2,500 (broadleaf 3,300; biodiversity 1,100) by year 4 or 6 |
| England | EWCO woodland creation; felling-licence restocking | Broadleaves 1,100/ha, conifers 2,500/ha (by year 5 for EWCO) |
| Scotland | The FGS woodland-creation options: conifer, diverse conifer, broadleaves, native broadleaves, native Scots pine, native upland birch, native low-density, Northern & Western Isles, small or farm woodland | From 500 to 3,100/ha by option, with the option’s composition rules |
| Wales | Woodland Creation Grant native (1,600 or 1,100) and 2,500/ha | The option’s density |
| Continuous cover (anywhere) | Natural regeneration (FC Information Note 45), underplanting / enrichment, group or cluster planting, CCF-oriented mixed establishment | 2,000/ha with ≥ 90 % of plots at 1,000; 90 % of your density; your groups per ha; 90 % of 2,500 |
| Your own (anywhere) | Enter the minimum (stems/ha or % of planted), the broadleaf minimum, the one-species maximum, a free-growing height and whether natural regeneration counts | Yours |
Also in the target: the planting density and the planted mix (“OK 40, BI 40, HAZ 20”). Without a planted mix the stand’s species composition is used. The beating-up and per-species targets come from the mix; for group planting enter the groups planted per ha.
Some profiles are partly the app’s reading or default — FT5 emergent, Wales 2,500, CCF underplanting, CCF group planting, CCF-oriented mixed and your own. The result says so. Check the numbers against your contract; the full table with pages and dates is in the app’s documentation (docs/protocols/establishment.md).
Record in the field
Lay out the plots with the sample-layout tool: circles of 5.64 m radius (0.01 ha) round a numbered cane, the number of plots following the Scottish Forestry stocking protocol — 4 up to 2 ha, 6 up to 10 ha, 20 up to 20 ha, 30 up to 30 ha, then 1 per ha. Survey each part with a different species mix separately.
- Plot. Empty planting positions, stage (open, thicket, closed), weed cover in the 1 m spot round the trees, weed height and type, and — for group planting — the groups planted and how many are established. Note whether formative shaping is needed or done. Add a photo.
- Trees by species. For each species, the trees alive and dead. A tree on the plot line counts as a half. Mark natural regeneration as natural — it counts toward stocking only where the profile allows it.
- Sample trees. The 5 live planted trees nearest the cane: species, height (enter in cm), leader clear of weeds, leader browsed this season / earlier / not, bark stripping or fraying, other damage, and — for broadleaves in mixtures — the light check: is the leader shorter than its side shoots? The next tree keeps the species for a quick tally.
- Guards. By type (spiral, tube or shelter, mesh, other) and condition (good, damaged, harming the tree, to remove), with a count.
- Woodland character (optional; recommended by the native, broadleaf and CCF profiles): layer covers, ground flora with ancient-woodland indicators flagged, natural colonists by species, size and origin.
While you are still on the plot, the live result shows the stems per ha found so far.
Read the result
| Result | When |
|---|---|
| Failing | Stocking — or the share of plots stocked, or the established groups — is below the profile’s minimum. |
| Needs attention | Any other rule is not met: beating-up needed, the mix off its rules, too many plots below the minimum, weeds, browsing, damage, guards, or a tending check. |
| On track | Every rule is met. |
| Not judged | The minimum cannot be worked out — for example a share of a planting density nobody entered. |
- The rules table lists every rule with its threshold, what was found, the result and the source. A value exactly on a limit passes.
- Stocking is live stems per ha — or free-growing stems where the profile counts them (live × the share of sample leaders clear) — with an interval between plots, the % of the target, and the plots below the minimum. Survival is planted alive ÷ (alive + dead + empty positions).
- Per species: planted share, target, live stems per ha, survival, beating-up, mean height, spread and growth per year since the last visit.
- Tree condition — free growing, leaders browsed, bark and other damage — is shown with 95 % intervals (plots are the clusters, as in the browsing methods).
- Guards per ha by type and condition, and how many to take off.
- Across visits, mean height and the woodland-character measures show their direction of travel.
The latest result feeds the stand Overview and its Needs your attention list, the owner report, the five-year review and the payment-evidence report.
FT10 and CCF-oriented mixed plantings
Two profiles are for conifer–broadleaf plantings meant for continuous cover from the start. Each check is labelled in its source as regulation, evidence or opinion.
- FT10 (Ireland) — regulation, from the Afforestation Scheme 2023–2027 (v1.3, Oct 2024, pp. 57–58): 90 % of 2,500/ha free growing by year 4; broadleaves at least 20 %; Sitka and Norway spruce at most 55 %; at least two other conifer species; groups of at most 100 trees; formative shaping of the broadleaves by the 2nd instalment. The scheme’s “± 20 % for each species” is read as ± 20 % of each planted share — that reading is not verified and the result says so.
- CCF-oriented mixed establishment — the same Irish minimum, plus checks from the evidence: each component (broadleaves, conifers) at least 90 % of its own target; any leader browsing on the broadleaves flagged; conifers more than 1.5 m taller than the broadleaves → release the minority; natural regeneration above 3,000/ha → respace to 1,500–2,500/ha; first selective crown thinning due at 10 m top height (select 150–250 frame trees per ha).
- Design cautions (evidence, never a rule): species pairs that compete badly — Sitka spruce with oak or Scots pine needs groups of 121 trees or more (Kerr et al. 2020). Where FT10 caps groups at 100 trees, the result cautions that a grant-compliant design can still lose its minority and needs early release: the scheme and the CCF evidence disagree there.
Beating-up and the plan
The survey proposes work and never adds it. On the stand’s Plan tab, under Proposed from the latest establishment survey, you see lines such as “Beat up 300 stems/ha of oak (about 600 trees on 2.00 ha) by the end of the 2026/27 planting season”, weed control, guards to take off, and the tending prompts (release, shaping, respacing, first thinning). Choose Review and add, change what you need and add it to the plan. Work already in the plan for that year is not proposed again. See Planned work.
Grant evidence
Three evidence checklists use the survey. See Grant evidence. You make the claim; the app shows the evidence.
- Ireland — Afforestation 2nd instalment (Form 3): a survey within 2 months of the claim and on track; failures replaced.
- England — EWCO maintenance: stocking kept by year 5, dead trees replaced, photos.
- Scotland — FGS stocking return: a survey with the protocol’s number of plots, plots located and mapped, dead trees replanted.
No establishment checklist yet for Northern Ireland or Wales: the survey result and the beating-up still go into the evidence report.
The profiles’ minimums, mix rules and beating-up to 100 % come from their sources. The app’s own cut-offs are provisional: beating-up flagged from 50 stems/ha; at most 20 % of plots below the minimum; a plot needs weeding above 25 % cover in the 1 m spot or with more than 10 % of sample leaders not clear; at most 20 % of plots weedy, 20 % of leaders browsed and 20 % of trees damaged.
- No results screenshots yet: they follow with the next web capture.
- No per-group record: group integrity and outer-row shading are not assessed — only planted and established groups per plot.
- No profiles yet for Northern Ireland, Scottish restocking conditions or the Welsh enhanced-mixed broadleaf share — use “your own”.
Sources: DAFM Forestry Standards Manual (Nov 2023); DAFM Afforestation Scheme 2023–2027 v1.3 (Oct 2024); DAFM Standards for Felling and Reforestation (2019); Scottish Forestry Stocking Density Survey Protocol V7 (2021) and the FGS option pages; Forestry Commission EWCO guidance and felling-licence restocking notes; Welsh Government Woodland Creation Grant rules; Kerr et al. (2002) FC Information Note 45; Mason & Kerr (2004) FC Information Note 40; Kerr, Haufe, Stokes & Mason (2020) QJF 114(3); Mason (2006) FC Information Note 83; Forest Research FDT flashcards (2024). Woodland character after Harrington (2026) and Perrin & Daly (2010).