1817 J. Christie Instr. for Hunting 39 Without a bit of screef aboon, But bare and naked craigs o' stane.

1866 W. Gregor Dial. Banffshire (Philol. Soc.) 163 There's a fine skreef o' girs on that shift.

1925 R. L. Cassie Gangrel Muse 33 An' swack little feeties trip licht o' the screef, I' the reelin' an' furlin' o' fairies.

1952 Buchan Observer 7 Oct. You may weel spier fa's to cast yer divots, gin sae be that ye ken o' a bittie o' gweed screef.

1998 K. Broad Caring for Small Woods iii. 129 Remove a screef of surface vegetation to leave a patch of bare soil.

1934 Forestry 8 21 Where there is a skin of peat..it is preferable to plant in a ploughed furrow, or in a screef with loosened soil.

1950 30th Ann. Rep. Forestry Commissioners 1949 52 These [trees] were planted in so-called ‘screefs’, i.e., square patches from which the surface vegetative layer has been pared off with a mattock.

1995 S. J. Hodge Creating & managing Woodlands around Towns v. 77/1 A square of turf can be..cut out first and..removed, with the notch being cut directly into the exposed soil (screef planting).

1950 R. Jenkins So Gaily sings Lark xxii. 203 With the spade the vegetation was scraped away, and in the black ‘scrief-mark’ as it was called an L notch was made, into which the tree was carefully inserted, the earth being firmed again by careful pressure of the heel.

1959 Q. Jrnl. Forestry Jan. 61 A 2 ft. square hole one spit deep was dug in the centre of the screef mark.

1913 Trans. Royal Sc. Arboricultural Soc. 27 73 I had the ground ‘scriefed’—that is, a small portion of the surface..is taken off.

1930 Forestry 4 20 Screef the surface lightly with the flat end [of a mattock], and then loosen up the patch with the pick end.

1997 Canad. Geographic May 60/2 After a forest yields its wealth to loggers, treeplanters scatter across the landscape screefing the terrain down to the soil to plant seedlings.

2013 Irish Examiner (Nexis) 25 July Firebreaks are made using a digger screefing the top vegetation layer.