Woodland Near Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK Royalty-Free Stock Photography

Woodland near Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK A woodland is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood or in the U.S., the plurale tantum woods, a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and a limited shade see differences between British, American, and Australian English. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during the early stages of primary or secondary succession. Higher-density areas of trees with a largely closed canopy that provides extensive and nearly continuous shade are often referred to as forests. Woodland is used in British woodland management to mean tree-covered areas which arose naturally and which are then managed, while the forest is usually used in the British Isles to describe plantations, usually more extensive, or hunting Forests, which are a land-use with a legal definition and may not be wooded at all. The term ancient woodland is used in British nature conservation to refer to any wooded land that has existed since 1600, and often though not always for thousands of years, since the last Ice Age,equivalent to the American term old-growth forest.