LIFESCAPES – WHAT HABITAT WHERE? HOW USING GIS MODELLING CAN HELP

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LIFESCAPES – WHAT HABITAT WHERE? HOW USING GIS MODELLING CAN HELP BRENDA WILLIAMSON The Lifescapes project is a three-year pilot that will run until the end of March 2004. It is a landscape-scale approach to delivering biodiversity. The Suffolk Coast and Heaths Natural area is one of four pilot areas that are wholly funded by English Nature – the others are in the Chilterns, the South Downs and Bowland. Another Lifescapes project is currently running in Kent, which is half-funded by English Nature and half-funded by Kent County Council. All Natural Areas have their own characteristic wildlife, geography, climate and soils, and so they do not follow administrative boundaries. The Suffolk Coast and Heaths Natural Area is important for many Biodiversity Action Plan Priority habitats, including lowland heathland, reedbeds, saline lagoons, cereal field margins, coastal sand dunes, saltmarsh, wet woodlands, coastal vegetated shingle, coastal and floodplain grazing marsh and wood pasture and parkland. The main reasons for undertaking the work are that: English Nature, along with other statutory organisations in the UK, is responsible for maintaining and enhancing species and habitats. Many habitat have been reduced in extent and quality in recent decades Many animals and plants are becoming scarcer both inside and outside of nature reserves and other special sites. A more strategic and integrated approach is needed when making decisions about land management in order to improve the benefits for wildlife and people. The overall aim of Lifescapes is to find ways of achieving long-term changes to the landscape that are environmentally and economically sustainable, which also deliver broader benefits to society. Lifescapes involves working in the wider countryside – it is a shift in emphasis from the more traditional sitebased approach to nature conservation. The site-based approach has been successful at stemming the loss of core areas of semi-natural habitats, but most plants and animals need to be able to move between sites to ensure their longterm survival, and others, such as bats and farmland birds, need a mixture of habitats within a large area. The Lifescapes project is working towards the aim of achieving a sustainably managed countryside by: Accumulating environmental information to help people make more informed decisions about land management – access to good environmental data and maps are essential to understanding the landscape and setting out what might be achieved. Interfacing environmental information with a wide range of data sets – e.g. historical land use, soils. Producing maps to show shat land management options are feasible given the environmental constraints and opportunities.

Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 40 (2004)


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LIFESCAPES – WHAT HABITAT WHERE? HOW USING GIS MODELLING CAN HELP by Suffolk Naturalists' Society - Issuu