Gabriel E Hemery- DPhil FICFor
- Executive at Sylva Foundation
Gabriel E Hemery
- DPhil FICFor
- Executive at Sylva Foundation
About
112
Publications
22,805
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1,518
Citations
Introduction
I'm a silvologist with special interests in climate change adaptation and resilience, genetic diversity and improvement in hardwoods, and participatory research. http://www.gabrielhemery.com
Current institution
Additional affiliations
March 2009 - March 2016
March 2009 - March 2016
Independent Researcher
Position
- Chief Executive
January 2009 - March 2016
Independent Researcher
Position
- Chief Executive
Publications
Publications (112)
Nadia Barsoum, Gabriel Hemery, Amanda Newsome, Neil Riddle and Chris Tomlin introduce a new smartphone App that facilitates the assessment of the ecological condition of a woodland; they describe the background development of the woodland condition assessment methodology and close synergies between national and woodland-scale assessment methodologi...
The values of forests have been extensively researched by focusing on general public perspectives with different frameworks used to categorise them. Studies have also explored forest manager values; however, there is limited evidence on the values they associate with specific tree species. Understanding more about managers’ values regarding a parti...
Woodland creation has become an important objective for a variety of stakeholders to help tackle the climate and biodiversity crises. One of the key evidence needs is a better understanding of the multiple factors influencing the willingness and ability of landowners and managers to establish new woodlands. To address this gap, a systematic map of...
We describe experiences between 2018 and 2021 co-designing tree health policy options linked with the UK’s evolving land use policy post EU-Exit within the Future Farming and Countryside Programme. Policy makers, researchers and more than 250 land managers took part in a series of co-design engagements in a three-phase iterative co-design process t...
Forests are in the spotlight: they are expected to play a pivotal role in our response to society’s greatest challenges, such as the climate and biodiversity crises. Yet, the forests themselves, and the sector that manages them, face a range of interrelated threats and opportunities. Many of these are well understood, even if the solutions remain e...
The managers of private forests have critical roles in responding to forest health challenges. Basic knowledge of how they interpret and understand the health of their trees is, however, very sparse. Via an online survey of private forest managers in Britain, we reveal the basic characteristics of this group’s understandings of tree and forest heal...
In 1664 London, even while copies of John Evelyn’s magisterial book Sylva were rolling off the presses under the auspices of the Royal Society, news of another major plague outbreak on mainland Europe reached the city. Evelyn’s mission for King Charles II was to inspire a revival of interest in silviculture, including more afforestation in Britain....
The British Woodlands Survey 2020 (BWS2020) was a multi-partner project, led by the Sylva Foundation and undertaken with funding from the Forestry Commission to explore awareness, action, and aspiration among the forestry sector to environmental change. The survey was the first repeat of a similar and baseline survey undertaken in 2015, providing a...
A biocultural diversity approach integrates plant biology and germplasm dispersal processes with human cultural diversity. An increasing number of studies have identified cultural factors and ethnolinguistic barriers as the main drivers of the genetic diversity in crop plants. Little is known about how anthropogenic processes have affected the evol...
Forest and woodland owners and managers are generally perceived to be acting slowly in addressing environmental change by adapting their forestry practice. Diversification of tree species composition and stand structure is widely promoted as one adaptive approach to increasing the resilience of forests to climate change and other threats. Land mana...
A public online survey, called Bringing Children Closer to Nature, was run in late 2018 and promoted to educational practitioners, both School and Non-school, and also to Woodland owners. The aims were to present a snapshot of the current status of Forest School practice and outdoor learning in wooded areas and forests, and to specifically gather m...
Invasive tree pests and diseases present some of the greatest global threats to forests, and the recent global acceleration in invasions has caused massive ecological damage. Calls to improve biosecurity have, however, often lost out to economic arguments in favour of
trade [3]. Human activities, such as trade, move organisms between continents, an...
Acute outbreaks of pests and disease are increasingly affecting tree populations around the world, causing widespread ecological effects. In Britain, ash dieback Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (Baral et al.) has severe impacts on common ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) populations, and the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) is likely to add to t...
There is increasing interest in understanding, valuing and supporting the variety of ecosystem services that forests and woodlands can provide in the United Kingdom. Land owners and managers can play a key role in the delivery of forest ecosystem services through active woodland management and woodland creation. This report explores evidence for la...
The diverse nature of forest science, yet the lack of a defining and simple term for the scientific discipline for the study of forests and woods, is a surprising juxtaposition. 'Silvology' is proposed as a new scientific discipline for scientists working in the fields of forest ecosystem and silviculture research.
We adopted a ‘360-degree’ research method for British Woodlands Survey 2017, whereby stakeholders were engaged in designing the survey, providing data, and reviewing outcomes. Forty-eight workshop delegates ranked priority themes provided by 221 respondents in an initial survey, for UK countries: England, Scotland and Wales. Overall, Societal attit...
Common walnut (Juglans regia L) is an economically important species cultivated worldwide for its high-quality wood and nuts. It is generally accepted that after the last glaciation J. regia survived and grew in almost completely isolated stands in Asia, and that ancient humans dispersed walnuts across Asia and into new habitats via trade and cultu...
List of 450 fossil pollen sites from Eurasia considered in this study.
The geographic coordinates in decimal degrees (Latitude, Longitude), early presence (1700–11.923 Ka BP), first detection of discontinuous and continuous occurrence of Juglans-type fossil pollen (radiocarbon-dating) during the Holocene and the related citation (a) and the presenc...
All scenarios tested in stages 1–2 of DIYABC analysis.
All scenarios tested in stage 1 (a) and stage 2 (b) of DIYABC analysis. In these scenarios, N# refers to effective population size of each corresponding gene pool, and t# refers to time-scale in terms of the number of generations (more details for population parameters and models in S3 and S4 T...
Description of 91 common walnut populations sampled in Eurasia.
Number of samples (N), geographic coordinates (Lat, Long) and elevation above sea level (Elev) for 91 common walnut populations collected in Eurasia.
(DOCX)
Parameters used for DIYABC analysis.
Population pools and the prior distributions of the parameters used for the two stages of DIYABC analysis.
(DOCX)
Bottleneck analysis of 91 common walnut populations sampled across Eurasia using 14 SSR markers.
Wilcoxon’s signed-rank’ test [35], shifted allele distribution analysis [37] and the M-ratio test [38] for each walnut population are reported.
(DOCX)
Geographic location of 91 common walnut populations collected across Eurasia.
Kyrgyzstan (1–9), Uzbekistan (10–26), China (27–32), Pakistan (33–34), Tajikistan (35), Iran (36), Georgia (37–38), Turkey (39–40), Greece (41–44), Romania (45), Moldova (46), Hungary (47–56), Slovakia (57),France (58–61), Spain (62) and Italy (63–91).
(TIF)
Bayesian inference of the most probable number of clusters and sub-clusters for 91 walnut populations.
Bayesian Inference of (a) K, the most probable number of clusters, based on microsatellite analysis of all 2,008 common walnut samples, (b) K’, the most probable number of sub-clusters, based on microsatellite analysis of 217 common walnut samples...
Scenarios considered in the two stages of DIYABC analysis.
Description of the scenarios of common walnut expansion across Europe considered in the two stages of DIYABC analysis.
(DOCX)
Genetic characterization of 14 microsatellite loci for 91 common walnut populations.
Total number of alleles (A), the effective number of alleles (Ae), observed (Ho) and expected heterozygosity (HE), polymorphic information content (PIC), and the unbiased estimate of Wright’s fixation indices, within-population inbreeding coefficient f (FIS), total...
Genetic diversity of 91 common walnut populations.
Mean number of alleles per locus (A), effective number of alleles (Ne), allelic richness (Rs) and private allelic richness (PAR) standardized to eight individuals from the original number of trees per population, observed (HO), expected (HE), and unbiased expected heterozygosity (UHE) and inbreedin...
Mean percentage of membership (Qi) of each common walnut population inferred by STRUCTURE.
Percentage of membership (admixture proportion-Q) of each predefined common walnut population in each of the four (K = 4) clusters, two (K’ = 4) sub-clusters for cluster 1, two (K” = 2) sub-clusters for cluster 2 and two (K”‘ = 2) sub-clusters for cluster 4 i...
Model checking of the most likely scenario inferred in the first and second stage.
Model checking of the most likely scenario inferred in the first stage (scenario 5a) and in the second stage (scenario 6b) of DIYABC analysis. Deviation of summary statistics computed for the observed dataset from the posterior predictive distribution of the most lik...
Distribution of Juglans-types fossil pollen in Europe before the LGM and during the Holocene.
Distribution of the radio-carbon dated Juglans-types fossil pollen in Europe and western Asia before the LGM and during the Holocene.
(MOV)
High-quality abundance data are expensive and time-consuming to collect and often highly limited in availability. Nonetheless, accurate, high-resolution abundance distributions are essential for many ecological applications ranging from species conservation to epidemiology. Producing models that can predict abundance well, with good resolution over...
Hemery, G., Petrokofsky, G., Ambrose-Oji, B., Atkinson, G., Broadmeadow, M.,
Edwards, D., Harrison, C., Lloyd, S., Mumford, J., O’Brien, L., Reid, C., Seville, M.,
Townsend, M., Weir, J., and Yeomans, A.,
Common walnut (Juglans regia L) is an economically important species cultivated worldwide for its wood and nuts. It is generally accepted that J. regia survived and grew spontaneously in almost completely isolated stands in its Asian native range after the Last Glacial Maximum. Despite its natural geographic isolation, J. regia evolved over many ce...
Persian walnut (Juglans regia L) is an economically important species cultivated worldwide for its wood and nuts. Despite an increasing interest in the development of conservation strategies for walnut germplasm, an accurate and full-scale overview of wild genetic resources of J. regia has not been carried out because natural populations are locate...
Gabriel Hemery and co-authors explain the concept behind an online network promoting and sharing knowledge about novel forest species, and encourage woodland owners to get involved
Hemery, G., Jinks, R., Lloyd, S., Ralph, J., 2014. SilviFuture: promoting and sharing knowledge of novel forest species. Quarterly Journal of Forestry 108, 43–47.
Rhododendron ponticum is a constant problem on the island of Lundy. We present the results of an experiment investigating the lasting legacy of Rhododendron following manual clearance, and the time needed for natural regeneration of the plants and fungi in cleared areas. These results are discussed with particular reference to their implications fo...
Daniel Kinash, James Walmsley and Gabriel Hemery report on a national survey of the domestic firewood supply chain undertaken during 2012
This survey was a collaborative initiative between the Sylva Foundation and the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, which permitted the inclusion and update of a long-standing survey of a targeted group of large estates in England & Wales.
The aim was to gain insights into the extent to which woodland owners felt they understood th...
Kirsty Monk and Gabriel Hemery investigate the role and importance of the lesser known group of ecosystem engineers in British woodlands, examine the extent of our fungal knowledge and discuss their implications for forestry in the future.
The extent and provenance of the existing global knowledge base were qualified in relation to ten specific questions of priority to forestry research. The ten questions were derived from a participatory exercise; the Top Ten Questions for Forestry research (T10Q) completed in 2008. Analysis of the first-ranked question, re-lating to invasive specie...
Kathy Norman, Paul Burgess, Alistair Yeomans and Gabriel Hemery
review existing and projected impacts of the emerging woodfuel market on woodland management, using a case study of an English estate
Britain is the second least-wooded country in Europe, having lost its woods after centuries of clearance for agriculture and economic development. Its people are disconnected from the concept of growing trees for wood, even though timber is Britain's sixth largest import. It is argued that there is a lost wood culture in Britain. A number of initia...
There is growing interest in widening public participation in research and practice in environmental decision making and an awareness of the importance of framing research questions that reflect the needs of policy and practice. The Top Ten Questions for Forestry (T10Q) project was undertaken in 2008 to investigate a process for compiling and prior...
Common walnut (Juglans regia L.) is cultivated across much of Europe. There are many qualities that favour it as a valuable broadleaved tree for the future including its rapid growth, the high value of its timber and its plasticity in respect to projected climate change. Some countries in Europe, particularly France and Italy, have invested many ye...
Broadleaved trees represent 37 % of the forest resource of Europe; equating to 9 % of the world's forest resource. The high number of broadleaved species (c. 80), many of which are 'minor', is reflected in a lack of adequate information on their distribution and state of health. Existing and projected impacts of climate change on the broadleaved re...
Data from a trial of 36 families at Little Wittenham, North Oxford was used to assess growth traits and stem form in common ash (Fraxinus excelsior, L.). The trial followed a design described by Barnes (Silv Genet 44(2–3):81–88, 1995) as the Breeding Seedling Orchard (BSO). The objectives of the study were to determine variation in growth and form...
Valuable broadleaved tree species are important across Europe; economically, environmentally and culturally. Independent approaches to supporting and developing this valuable resource across the different countries of Europe has meant that knowledge and experience is widely dispersed and often inaccessible to a wider audience.
COST Action E42 broug...
The commercial, welfare and environmental impacts of rearing small colonies of free-range chickens in newly planted woodland at two sites in the UK, during the first 2 years of the enterprise, were investigated. Newly planted rather than established trees were used so that commercially viable species could be planted in a way that would suit the ma...
![Figure 1 Trends in growing-stock per ha 1950-2000 [23]](profile/Gabriel-Hemery/publication/235710895/figure/fig1/AS:669427003564034@1536615243474/Trends-in-growing-stock-per-ha-1950-2000-23_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 3 Trends in annual increment 1950-2000 [23]](profile/Gabriel-Hemery/publication/235710895/figure/fig2/AS:669427003584516@1536615243584/Trends-in-annual-increment-1950-2000-23_Q320.jpg)
Investigating agroforestry systems that incorporate poultry is warranted in Northern Europe as they may offer benefits including: improved welfare and use of range; reduced feed costs; price premia on products; reduced payback periods for forests; and, greater returns on investment. Free-range egg production accounts for 27% of the United Kingdom e...
This report is the product of a Short-Term Scientific Mission conducted for COST Action E42, concerning the predicted impacts of global climate change in Europe, with the aims of: (1) appraising the scientific methods being used to predict the changes that will occur in distributions of valuable broadleaved species, and; (2) outlining forest manage...
Gabriel Hemery MICFor imagines looking back from forty years in the future and charts the path to a sustainable forestry sector
This guide is intended for anyone establishing trees in a woodland setting. The recommendations here are aimed particularly at broadleaves established in the lowlands on mineral soils. If planting in upland areas or in heavy peaty soils, seek additional advice. Successful tree establishment relies on three key stages, planning, planting and afterca...
There is a well known but comparatively little-studied relationship between crown diameters (K) and stem diameters (d) of trees. Between about 20 and 50 cm dbh the relationship is very close to being linear, with an r2 value higher than 0.8. The investigation described in this paper was conducted to establish the relationships for 11 broadleaved sp...
A collection of common walnut (Juglans regia L.) genotypes from the species' natural and introduced ranges was assembled in 1997 to test their suitability for timber production in Britain. Field trials were established across three sites in southern England during winter 1998, containing 18 provenances. Tree height was measured annually, allowing h...
Walnut (Juglans spp.) has not been widely cultivated for timber or fruit production in the United Kingdom (UK). Recent research activities in the UK have stimulated renewed interest in common walnut (J. regia), black walnut (J. nigra) and hybrids as providers of valuable timber on relatively short rotations, and in the case of J. regia, as a highly...
Gabriel Hemery describes a new farming system that marries poultry and forestry
Is it possible to combine trees and poultry to benefit animal welfare whilst promoting tree growth and providing a viable financial return, without harming the environment? Gabriel Hemery reports on a novel research project that it tackling this challenge, addressing the poultry, forestry and environmental elements of an innovative sustainable syst...
Black walnut is an introduced species in the United Kingdom (UK) and economically one of the more productive broadleaved species. Currently it is not widely planted in the UK as there is insufficient knowledge about the species among foresters and very little, if any, improved material is available. A research programme was initiated in 2001 to add...
A combination of genetic and silvicultural research is required to improve the viability of common walnut for timber production in the UK. A summary of a research programme, initiated in 1996, is provided. Establishment of walnut plantations using tree shelters indicated positive benefits using 0.75 m shelters but larger shelters (1.20 m) caused ea...
Questions
Question (1)
The epidemic is currently at differing stages across Europe with the initial phase in Finland and Norway, a peak of incidence in Sweden and Denmark, a post-decline (or chronic) phase in Latvia and Lithuania, and its recent arrival in the UK. While the ecological niche will vary between countries, there must be powerful inferences that could be gained from a European-wide perspective.
