A new multimillennial analysis of woodland ecosystems in the Leicestershire landscape shows significant anthropogenic stress over the last six millennia. More...

When the glaciers retreated in northern Europe at the end of the last ice age, forest cover reached a maximum of around 70%, dominated by deciduous, broadleaf tree species. However, this was lower in Britain and Ireland where the landscape was more open than mainland Europe. By 8,000 years ago widespread Celtic broadleaf woodland ('Celtic forest') covered most of lowland Britain, with a mixture of temperate rainforest in the west, mixed broadleaf forest through much of southern Scotland, Wales and England, and lowland beech forest in the southeast. 

Humans have been present in Leicestershire since the Late Paleolithic and flint tools have been found in south Leicestershire dating back to this period. There is evidence of Mesolithic settlement ~8,000 years ago in east Leicestershire, with tools and animal remains revealing human interactions with the environment from hunting to plant cutting. Leicestershire woodland sites have had anthropogenic influences over the Holocene, for example, there is historical evidence of management practices including pollarding and coppicing of Ash, Hazel and Small-leaved Lime, with damaging impact from clear-felling in the 20th century. Currently around 84% of the land cover in Leicestershire is agricultural, while woodland cover is 6% and fragmentary, which is a major reduction from the estimated 60–70% Middle Holocene maximum tree cover. Despite major human disturbance over millennia and the lack of any continuous primary woodland, pockets of woodlands remain that by utilizing traditional human-woodland interactions such as coppicing, make it possible to support the conservation and sustenance of this broadleaf biome. 

Sellers, H., Berrio, J. C., De Sabbata, S., Jones, R., Evans, A., Brown, A. G., & Williams, M. (2025). Evidence of long-term woodland persistence despite prolonged anthropogenic stress: The combined use of pollen and place-names in lowland Leicestershire, UK. The Holocene, 09596836251387254. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836251387254