Palette in Practice: Guide 03
Auditing an existing tree population on Palette
This guide looks specifically at the Population Audit feature on the Palette platform and how to assess your existing tree stock.
Understanding the climate vulnerability of your existing tree population is just as important as planning what to plant in future. By assessing the species already growing across your site, you can build a picture of potential risks, identify where vulnerabilities are concentrated and understand how well your current population may be suited to changing climate conditions.
Palette provides you with evidence to support future management and planting decisions. Rather than responding to losses as they occur, you can begin to consider where greater diversity may be needed, and which species could be better suited to the conditions they will face in the future.
With a paid subscription to Palette, you get access to data and climate suitability assessments for over 300 trees, all tailored to your specific site. Using population audits alongside other project and site management features helps to support a more strategic approach to managing your tree stock.
By the end of this guide, you’ll know how to:
· undertake an audit of your existing tree stock on palette
· interpret the results of this audit
· export your findings into a formal report
1. Start a new population audit
From your Palette homepage, select Population Audit from the left-hand toolbar. If this is your first audit, you’ll find a set of fields on this page ready for you to get started.
Start by giving your audit a name. This can be anything meaningful to your project or site, such as estate name.
Fill in the following information:
Location: Choose the relevant UK region from the drop-down menu.
Climate Scenario: This is defaulted to End-of-century, but can be changed to near-term.
Annual or growing-season climate: This determines whether the assessment considers conditions across the full year at the site or focuses specifically on the climate during the growing season (which is the default).
These settings establish the location and climate conditions against which your existing tree population will be assessed.
Add your existing tree inventory
You can add your tree stock in two ways: by importing a spreadsheet or entering species manually.
Option A: Import a spreadsheet
Upload an Excel or CSV file containing your tree inventory. The file should include:
· Species Name: Use the scientific name, not the common name
· Quantity: The number of trees of each species
· DBH band (optional): The diameter at breast height range to provide an indication of tree size.
Palette will check the imported information and flag any entries that need correcting before you proceed.
Option B: Add species manually
Alternatively, search Palette’s species database and add trees individually.
Note that you must search using the species’ scientific name. Palette uses the second part of the binomial name (species as opposed to genus) to find species. For example, search for “robur” to find English Oak (Quercus robur).
Building an accurate picture of your existing tree stock is the foundation of a useful population audit. By recording the species and quantity present, you can understand not only which trees may be vulnerable, but how much of your overall population they represent.
Once your inventory is complete, select Run Vulnerability Audit. The Try Example feature can be used in order to for you to see how the functionality works.
Review your headline audit results
Palette will generate an assessment of your existing tree population, bringing together several measures to help you understand its potential vulnerability and resilience.
At the top you will find summary statistics that include:
Overall vulnerability score: A score out of 100 for the level of vulnerability of your whole population, with higher scores indicating a more vulnerable stock.
Mycorrhizal diversity: An indication of the diversity and balance of species’ associations with soil fungi.
Species flagged for replacement: the number identified for consideration in future replacement planning.
Species scored: the number of species included in your assessment.
Total trees: The total number of individual trees in your inventory.
These headlines figures provide a useful starting point for understanding the population as a whole.
A stacked bar chart with traffic-light colour-coding provides a visual overview of the proportion of species categorised as either secure, at risk, vulnerable or critical. An additional chart presents the population’s allergen risk. Beneath a summary of the balance of mycorrhizal associations. This helps you to understand how your population relates to projected climate conditions and whether its mycorrhizal composition is well balanced.
4. Explore vulnerability, diversity and climate results in more detail
Beneath the headline results you will find a more detailed assessment of your population.
Population climate trajectory
Explore the site’s moisture trajectory. This is essentially at the heart of the audit which is measuring how each species in your inventory will cope with the future climate at your specific site.
Species-level results
Each individual species is then itemised with its individual assessment, with the most critically vulnerable species appearing at the top of the list. This helps you identify which parts of your existing tree stock may warrant closer attention.
Hover over the column titles for an explanation of the categories of results and what these mean. You can also click on the name of each species to get a more detailed profile of the tree’s traits, biological risks, ecosystem services and other important species characteristics and tolerances.
Looking at these results together helps you to understand the bigger picture. A species may be vulnerable in isolation, but knowing how many trees of that species you have helps you to understand the scale of potential risks and consider how increasing diversity could strengthen resilience.
Export and save your audit
To support sharing and external reference, you can export your audit using the options by navigating back to the top of the report page to the button on the right. Choose either PDF or excel as a format, depending on how you want to share the information.
Your audit is automatically saved to your Palette account, so you can return to it later to edit or add to it. When you revisit the Population Audit section of the platform later, your saved audit/s will appear at the top of the page, with the option to start another audit directly below.
From population audit to long-term resilience
Auditing an existing population is a valuable first step in establishing how vulnerable your site and its existing tree stock is to a changing climate. Use these findings to inform future management, replacement and planting decisions and take a more proactive approach to building a resilient tree population.
Ready to get more from Palette? Explore the available subscription plans to find features that best support your projects and your team.
Next in the Palette in Practice series: Colloboration, Sharing and Managing Revisions on Palette.
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