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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 40 CREATING WILDLIFE HABITATS IN A LANDSCAPE CONTEXT
PETER HOLBORN Introduction In this paper I will consider why the landscape context is so important, how new techniques of Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) can help us make land use and management decisions and finally look at some habitats at a landscape scale. What is landscape? The landscapes we see and experience are made up of four components: • Natural (soils, geology, flora and fauna) • Social (land use, settlement) • Perceptual (memories and associations) • Aesthetic (colour, texture, sounds, smells) We have to look at landscape as a whole; the historical geographer may be interested in field patterns, the ecologist in habitat creation but it is vitally important to understand where a landscape has evolved from and in what directions it may go. If a piecemeal approach is taken regarding land use and management decisions on individual land cover parcels the result can be a unconnected series of land uses lacking any overall character and distinctiveness. This is not to say that we should be resistant to change but it is a question of the right sort of change that respects how a landscape has evolved and conserves and enhances its landscape character. The purpose of LCA is to look at patterns, assess character and influence change. We have been quite good at mapping and modelling the historic and biological elements of landscape but have only recently started to examine landscape character. If landscape assessment is to be of any practical value as a decision making tool then it must be able to do more than simply describe what can be seen. The assessment process must be able to provide an informed analysis of the way in which the landscape has evolved as a basis for understanding the dynamics of current and future change. The assessment of landscape character should be concerned with not just identifying distinctive patterns but understanding the reasons why the constituent physical, biological and components occur in repeating patterns. A key component of the character based approach has been the use of digital geographical information systems (GIS) to help the storage, analysis and presentation of map based data and allow comparisons with other information across space and time.
The Character Assessment Process The first stage is desk based. For a Level 2, county or sub-regional, scale the database is structured around 8 definitive attributes grouped under physiography, ground type, land cover, settlement. Landscape Description Units (LDUs) are generated from this information using a computer software programme, and in Suffolk just over 300 LDUs have been identified (see Plate 4). Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 40 (2004)