Journal articles: 'Uplands – great britain'

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Bunce, Robert G. H., Claire M. Wood, and Simon M. Smart. "The Ecology of British Upland Landscapes. I. Composition of Landscapes, Habitats, Vegetation and Species." Journal of Landscape Ecology 11, no. 3 (December 1, 2018): 120–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/jlecol-2018-0015.

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Abstract A primary requirement for policy objectives is reliable figures on the composition of any region. Currently there is no comprehensive, definitive set of statistics for the British Uplands, hence the present paper. An overview of the background to the region is first provided, together with some examples of the available figures and a discussion of their limitations. The paper uses a formal structure, with landscapes at the highest level followed by habitats, then vegetation, and finally species, with exact definitions of the categories applied at all levels. The figures are produced from a survey of stratified, random one kilometre squares. The tables give comprehensive figures for Great Britain (GB) as a whole, and also England, Wales and Scotland. The Uplands are shown to cover 38 % of the country. In terms of UK Broad Habitats, Bog is the most common overall (2062 k ha). It is estimated that 41 % of upland vegetation in Britain is grazed by sheep, and Cervus elephus (red deer) are particularly evident in Scotland. Walls (mainly drystone) are the most important linear feature (84 k km) but hedgerows (30 k km) are also widespread. The major vegetation classes are those linked to moorlands and bogs (about 25 %) but those associated with fertile soils are also common (10 %). In terms of species, Potentilla erecta (tormentil) is the most frequent species with four other acid grassland species in the top ten. Calluna vulgaris (ling heather) has the highest cover in Great Britain (14.8 %).

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PALMER, S. C. F. "Prediction of the shoot production of heather under grazing in the uplands of Great Britain." Grass and Forage Science 52, no. 4 (December 1997): 408–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2494.1997.tb02373.x.

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Curtis, C., T. Allott, J. Hall, R. Harriman, R. Helliwell, M. Hughes, M. Kernan, B. Reynolds, and J. Ullyett. "Critical loads of sulphur and nitrogen for freshwaters in Great Britain and assessment of deposition reduction requirements with the First-order Acidity Balance (FAB) model." Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 4, no. 1 (March 31, 2000): 125–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/hess-4-125-2000.

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Abstract. The critical loads approach is widely used within Europe to assess the impacts of acid deposition on terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Recent work in Great Britain has focused on the national application of the First-order Acidity Balance (FAB) model to a freshwaters dataset of 1470 lake and stream water chemistry samples from sites across Britain which were selected to represent the most sensitive water bodies in their corresponding 10 km grid square. A ``Critical Load Function" generated for each site is compared with the deposition load of S and N at the time of water chemistry sampling. The model predicts that when catchment processes reach steady-state with these deposition levels, increases in nitrate leaching will depress acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) below the critical threshold of 0 μeql-1 at more than a quarter of the sites sampled, i.e. the critical load of acid deposition is exceeded at these sites. The critical load exceedances are generally found in upland regions of high deposition where acidification has been previously recognised, but critical loads in large areas of western Scotland are also exceeded where little biological evidence of acidification has yet been found. There is a regional variation in the deposition reduction requirements for protection of the sampled sites. The FAB model indicates that in Scotland, most of the sampled sites could be protected by sufficiently large reductions in S deposition alone. In the English and Welsh uplands, both S and N deposition must be reduced to protect the sites. Current international commitments to reduce S deposition throughout Europe will therefore be insufficient to protect the most sensitive freshwaters in England and Wales. Keywords: critical loads; acidification; nitrate; FAB model; acid deposition

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Canning, Jason C., P. J. Henney, M. A. Morrison, and J. W. Gaskarth. "Geochemistry of late Caledonian minettes from Northern Britain: implications for the Caledonian sub-continental lithospheric mantle." Mineralogical Magazine 60, no. 398 (February 1996): 221–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1180/minmag.1996.060.398.15.

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AbstractThe geochemistry of late Caledonian minettes from across the orogenic belt is compared in order to constrain the composition of the Caledonian sub-continental lithospheric mantle (SCLM). All the minettes are similar petrographically and chemically and several samples have characteristics typical of near primary mantle melts. Samples from the Northern Highlands and the Caledonian foreland show enrichment in many trace elements (notably LILE and LREE) relative to those from the Grampians, the Southern Uplands and northern England, coupled with distinct Nd and Sr isotope characteristics. Processes such as fractional crystallization, crustal assimilation, and partial melting played a negligible role in creating the differences between the two groups which reflect long-term, time-integrated differences in the compositions of their SCLM sources. The Great Glen Fault appears to represent the boundary between these two lithospheric mantle domains. Other currently exposed Caledonian tectonic dislocations cannot be correlated directly with compositional changes within the SCLM. The chemical provinciality displayed by the minettes shows some resemblance to that within other late Caledonian igneous suites, including the newer granites, suggesting that the minettes may represent the lithospheric mantle contributions to these rocks.

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Wilson, Peter. "Rockfall talus slopes and associated talus-foot features in the glaciated uplands of Great Britain and Ireland: periglacial, paraglacial or composite landforms?" Geological Society, London, Special Publications 320, no. 1 (2009): 133–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/sp320.9.

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Kalinina, S. A. "Toponymy of Celtic Scotland." SHS Web of Conferences 164 (2023): 00062. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202316400062.

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It has long been known that there is a certain link between a geographic locality and its name. The paper attempts to link the history, geography, and culture of Scotland with the names of its cities, homesteads, rivers, streams, mountains, hills, and other localities that are either man-made creations or natural phenomena. Despite covering mere 80,000 km2, Scotland is a unique region. Scotland is almost completely washed by sea, although most of its territory lies on the uplands. Mountains, hills, valleys, rich in diverse vegetation, conjure up an attractive look of Scotland. This very landscape forged the features of Scottish place names, one of the oldest place names on the world map. The paper will touch upon the earliest period when the names of Scottish geographic localities appeared, the period when this amazing country, currently part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was conquered by the Celtic tribes who penetrated this land in different centuries. First, the author dwells on word-building formants enabling to classify the place names of Scotland as part of the “Celtic” period of language evolution. Some elements including aber, ach, auchter/ochter, bail/baile, barr, blair, coil, dal, gart, inver, mach, pit, tulach , dating back to Celtic language culture, are part of most units of the place-name vocabulary of Scotland and primarily denote natural features of the landscape of the target region.

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Usher, M. B., and D. B. A. Thompson. "Variation in the upland heathlands of Great Britain: Conservation importance." Biological Conservation 66, no. 1 (1993): 69–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0006-3207(93)90136-o.

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Wood, Claire M., Robert G. H. Bunce, Lisa R. Norton, Simon M. Smart, and Colin J. Barr. "Land cover and vegetation data from an ecological survey of "key habitat" landscapes in England, 1992–1993." Earth System Science Data 10, no. 2 (May 18, 2018): 899–918. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-899-2018.

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Abstract. Since 1978, a series of national surveys (Countryside Survey, CS) have been carried out by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) (formerly the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, ITE) to gather data on the natural environment in Great Britain (GB). As the sampling framework for these surveys is not optimised to yield data on rarer or more localised habitats, a survey was commissioned by the then Department of the Environment (DOE, now the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA) in the 1990s to carry out additional survey work in English landscapes which contained semi-natural habitats that were perceived to be under threat, or which represented areas of concern to the ministry. The landscapes were lowland heath, chalk and limestone (calcareous) grasslands, coasts and uplands. The information recorded allowed an assessment of the extent and quality of a range of habitats defined during the project, which can now be translated into standard UK broad and priority habitat classes. The survey, known as the "Key Habitat Survey", followed a design which was a series of gridded, stratified, randomly selected 1 km squares taken as representative of each of the four landscape types in England, determined from statistical land classification and geological data ("spatial masks"). The definitions of the landscapes are given in the descriptions of the spatial masks, along with definitions of the surveyed habitats. A total of 213 of the 1 km2 square sample sites were surveyed in the summers of 1992 and 1993, with information being collected on vegetation species, land cover, landscape features and land use, applying standardised repeatable methods. The database contributes additional information and value to the long-term monitoring data gathered by the Countryside Survey and provides a valuable baseline against which future ecological changes may be compared, offering the potential for a repeat survey. The data were analysed and described in a series of contract reports and are summarised in the present paper, showing for example that valuable habitats were restricted in all landscapes, with the majority located within protected areas of countryside according to different UK designations. The dataset provides major potential for analyses, beyond those already published, for example in relation to climate change, agri-environment policies and land management. Precise locations of the plots are restricted, largely for reasons of landowner confidentiality. However, the representative nature of the dataset makes it highly valuable for evaluating the status of ecological elements within the associated landscapes surveyed. Both land cover data and vegetation plot data were collected during the surveys in 1992 and 1993 and are available via the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.5285/7aefe6aa-0760-4b6d-9473-fad8b960abd4. The spatial masks are also available from https://doi.org/10.5285/dc583be3-3649-4df6-b67e-b0f40b4ec895.

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Fryday, Alan M. "Effects of grazing animals on upland/montane lichen vegetation in Great Britain." Botanical Journal of Scotland 53, no. 1 (January 2001): 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03746600108684951.

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Jeffries, C. L., K. L. Mansfield, L. P. Phipps, P. R. Wakeley, R. Mearns, A. Schock, S. Bell, A. C. Breed, A. R. Fooks, and N. Johnson. "Louping ill virus: an endemic tick-borne disease of Great Britain." Journal of General Virology 95, no. 5 (May 1, 2014): 1005–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/vir.0.062356-0.

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In Europe and Asia, Ixodid ticks transmit tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV), a flavivirus that causes severe encephalitis in humans but appears to show no virulence for livestock and wildlife. In the British Isles, where TBEV is absent, a closely related tick-borne flavivirus, named louping ill virus (LIV), is present. However, unlike TBEV, LIV causes a febrile illness in sheep, cattle, grouse and some other species, that can progress to fatal encephalitis. The disease is detected predominantly in animals from upland areas of the UK and Ireland. This distribution is closely associated with the presence of its arthropod vector, the hard tick Ixodes ricinus. The virus is a positive-strand RNA virus belonging to the genus Flavivirus, exhibiting a high degree of genetic homology to TBEV and other mammalian tick-borne viruses. In addition to causing acute encephalomyelitis in sheep, other mammals and some avian species, the virus is recognized as a zoonotic agent with occasional reports of seropositive individuals, particularly those whose occupation involves contact with sheep. Preventative vaccination in sheep is effective although there is no treatment for disease. Surveillance for LIV in Great Britain is limited despite an increased awareness of emerging arthropod-borne diseases and potential changes in distribution and epidemiology. This review provides an overview of LIV and highlights areas where further effort is needed to control this disease.

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Curtis, Chris J., Timothy H. E. Heaton, Gavin L. Simpson, Chris D. Evans, James Shilland, and Simon Turner. "Dominance of biologically produced nitrate in upland waters of Great Britain indicated by stable isotopes." Biogeochemistry 111, no. 1-3 (December 3, 2011): 535–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10533-011-9686-8.

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Le Duc, M. G., R. J. Pakeman, and R. H. Marrs. "Vegetation development on upland and marginal land treated with herbicide, for bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) control, in Great Britain." Journal of Environmental Management 58, no. 2 (February 2000): 147–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jema.1999.0321.

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Allott, T. E. H., C. J. Curtis, J. Hall, R. Harriman, and R. W. Battarbee. "The impact of nitrogen deposition on upland surface waters in Great Britain: A regional assessment of nitrate leaching." Water, Air, & Soil Pollution 85, no. 2 (1995): 297–302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00476845.

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Macadam, Craig R., Judy England, and Richard Chadd. "The vulnerability of British aquatic insects to climate change." Knowledge & Management of Aquatic Ecosystems, no. 423 (2022): 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/kmae/2022003.

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Freshwater ecosystems are particularly at risk from climate change due to the intrinsic link between the physical properties of the water environment and those species that live there. Mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies are key indicators of the health of freshwater environments and their biological traits and ecological preferences determine their vulnerability to climate change. Traits and preferences for 289 British species were analysed, with voltinism, length of flight period, altitudinal preference and affinity to headwaters being the main factors causing vulnerability. Sixteen species were deemed to be at risk from climate change. These species are distributed across Great Britain, but particular hotspots of vulnerability are present in upland areas. These areas should be targeted with mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change on populations of aquatic insects.

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Thompson, D. B. A., A. J. MacDonald, J. H. Marsden, and C. A. Galbraith. "Upland heather moorland in Great Britain: A review of international importance, vegetation change and some objectives for nature conservation." Biological Conservation 71, no. 2 (1995): 163–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0006-3207(94)00043-p.

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Chamberlain, D. E., and G. M. Siriwardena. "The effects of agricultural intensification on Skylarks(Alauda arvensis): Evidence from monitoring studies in Great Britain." Environmental Reviews 8, no. 2 (February 1, 2000): 95–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/a00-007.

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Declines in a number of farmland bird species in northern Europe have been linked to agricultural intensification. In this paper, we review the evidence for the effects of agricultural intensification on farmland bird populations using monitoring studies on a single well-studied species, the Eurasian Skylark (Alauda arvensis). Between 1970 and 1998, the Skylark population declined by 44% and this decline was greatest on farmland compared to upland or coastal habitats, yet during that time, reproductive performance per individual nesting attempt improved significantly. Skylarks consistently prefer relatively sparse (spring cereals) or structurally complex (fallow "set-aside"') crops, particularly late in the breeding season when crops that are too tall or dense are abandoned. Outside the breeding season, cereal stubble is the most preferred foraging habitat. Intensification has been characterized by decreases in preferred crops (spring cereals and cereal stubble) and an increase in unfavourable habitats (winter cereals, oilseed rape, and intensively managed or grazed grass). Reduction in the number of breeding attempts due to rapid sward development of winter cereals and the lack of suitable alternative habitats is likely to have been an important factor in the Skylark decline. The decline may also have been driven by decreases in survival outside the breeding season. Management regimes that include spring cereals, cereal stubble, and low-intensity grazing are likely to increase Skylark abundance and will benefit a number of other farmland birds. This review highlights the great value of large-scale monitoring schemes in understanding population declines. However, the factors affecting the post-fledging survival of Skylarks and the effects of crop diversity on Skylark abundance remain to be resolved. Key words: agricultural management, cereals, habitat diversity, intensification, population trend, reproductive performance.

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Dykes, Alan P. "Landslide investigations during pandemic restrictions: initial assessment of recent peat landslides in Ireland." Landslides 19, no. 2 (December 30, 2021): 515–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10346-021-01797-0.

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AbstractLandslides involving peat are relatively common in Ireland, upland areas of Great Britain and subantarctic islands. Bogflows and bog slides are less common types of peat failure and almost unknown outside Ireland. Unusually, three of these occurred in 2020 including one bogflow at a windfarm that gained much adverse media attention, and a small but damaging peat slide was also reported. The aim of this paper is to determine the extent to which the new bog slide and bogflows are consistent with previous examples in terms of their contexts, characteristics and possible causes, particularly relating to commercial forestry operations. Aerial video footage of all three landslides obtained by local people using drones, and ground-based footage of one of them in progress, allowed a detailed examination of their characteristics and contexts to be made despite the global travel and activity restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The windfarm bogflow appears to have resulted from removal of toe support by an earlier peat flow that was itself probably caused by construction of an access road; the other two landslides were most likely triggered by rainfall. All three are consistent with previous examples of their respective types in their general characteristics and appear to be associated with well-known causal factors including hydrological, topographic and/or forestry influences. Forestry operations probably contributed to the occurrence of two of the landslides and restricted the expansion of two of them.

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Laizé, Cédric L. R., Cristian Bruna Meredith, Michael J. Dunbar, and David M. Hannah. "Climate and basin drivers of seasonal river water temperature dynamics." Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 21, no. 6 (June 30, 2017): 3231–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3231-2017.

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Abstract. Stream water temperature is a key control of many river processes (e.g. ecology, biogeochemistry, hydraulics) and services (e.g. power plant cooling, recreational use). Consequently, the effect of climate change and variability on stream temperature is a major scientific and practical concern. This paper aims (1) to improve the understanding of large-scale spatial and temporal variability in climate–water temperature associations, and (2) to assess explicitly the influence of basin properties as modifiers of these relationships. A dataset was assembled including six distinct modelled climatic variables (air temperature, downward short-wave and long-wave radiation, wind speed, specific humidity, and precipitation) and observed stream temperatures for the period 1984–2007 at 35 sites located on 21 rivers within 16 basins (Great Britain geographical extent); the study focuses on broad spatio-temporal patterns, and hence was based on 3-month-averaged data (i.e. seasonal). A wide range of basin properties was derived. Five models were fitted (all seasons, winter, spring, summer, and autumn). Both site and national spatial scales were investigated at once by using multi-level modelling with linear multiple regressions. Model selection used multi-model inference, which provides more robust models, based on sets of good models, rather than a single best model. Broad climate–water temperature associations common to all sites were obtained from the analysis of the fixed coefficients, while site-specific responses, i.e. random coefficients, were assessed against basin properties with analysis of variance (ANOVA). All six climate predictors investigated play a role as a control of water temperature. Air temperature and short-wave radiation are important for all models/seasons, while the other predictors are important for some models/seasons only. The form and strength of the climate–stream temperature association vary depending on season and on water temperature. The dominating climate drivers and physical processes may change across seasons and across the stream temperature range. The role of basin permeability, size, and elevation as modifiers of the climate–water temperature associations was confirmed; permeability has the primary influence, followed by size and elevation. Smaller, upland, and/or impermeable basins are the most influenced by atmospheric heat exchanges, while larger, lowland and permeable basins are the least influenced. The study showed the importance of accounting properly for the spatial and temporal variability of climate–stream temperature associations and their modification by basin properties.

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Shewring, Mike P., Nicholas I. Wilkinson, Emma L. Teuten, Graeme M. Buchanan, Patrick Thompson, and David J. T. Douglas. "Annual extent of prescribed burning on moorland in Great Britain and overlap with ecosystem services." Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, April 28, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rse2.389.

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AbstractIn the UK uplands, prescribed burning of unenclosed heath, grass and blanket bog (‘moorland’) is used to support game shooting and grazing. Burning on moorland is contentious due to its impact on peat soils, hydrology and habitat condition. There is little information on spatial and temporal patterns of burning, the overlap with soil carbon and sensitive habitats and, importantly, whether these patterns are changing. This information is required to assess the sustainability of burning and the effectiveness of new legislation. We developed a method for semi‐automated detection of burning using satellite imagery – our best performing model has a balanced accuracy of 84.9%. We identified annual burn areas in Great Britain in five burning seasons from 2017/18 to 2021/22 of 8333 to 20 974 ha (average 15 250 ha year−1). Annual extent in England in 2021/22 was 73% lower than the average of the four previous seasons. Burning was identified over carbon‐rich soils (mean 5150 ha or 34% by area of all burning annually) and on steep slopes – 915 ha across the five seasons (1.3%), contravening guidance. Burning (>1 ha) was recorded in 14% of UK protected areas (PAs) and, within these, the percentage area of moorland burned varied from 2 to 31%. In England in some years, the percentage area of moorland burned inside PAs was higher than outside, while this was not the case in Scotland. Burning in sensitive alpine habitats totalled 158 ha across the five seasons. The reduction in burned area in England in 2021/22 could relate to England‐specific legislation, introduced in May 2021, to prohibit burning on deep peat in PAs. This suggests that regulation can be effective. However, the continued overlap with sensitive features suggests that burning falls short of sustainable practices. Our method will enable repeatable re‐assessment of burning extents and overlap with ecosystem services.

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Folly, Arran J., Lorraine M. McElhinney, and Nicholas Johnson. "JMM Profile: Louping ill virus." Journal of Medical Microbiology 71, no. 5 (May 23, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.001502.

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Louping ill virus (LIV) is a single-stranded, positive-sense RNA virus within the genus Flavivirus that is transmitted to vertebrate hosts by bites from infected ticks, the arthropod vector. The virus affects livestock in upland areas of Great Britain and Ireland, resulting in a febrile illness that can progress to fatal encephalitis. Prevention of the disease is facilitated by combining acaricide treatment, land management and vaccination strategies. However, vaccines have been discontinued in recent years. Although rare, LIV can be transmitted to and cause disease in humans. Consequently, LIV infection is a threat to human and veterinary health and can impact on the rural economy.

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Williamson, Jennifer L., Andrew Tye, Dan J. Lapworth, Don Monteith, Richard Sanders, Daniel J. Mayor, Chris Barry, et al. "Landscape controls on riverine export of dissolved organic carbon from Great Britain." Biogeochemistry, February 16, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10533-021-00762-2.

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AbstractThe dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export from land to ocean via rivers is a significant term in the global C cycle, and has been modified in many areas by human activity. DOC exports from large global rivers are fairly well quantified, but those from smaller river systems, including those draining oceanic regions, are generally under-represented in global syntheses. Given that these regions typically have high runoff and high peat cover, they may exert a disproportionate influence on the global land–ocean DOC export. Here we describe a comprehensive new assessment of the annual riverine DOC export to estuaries across the island of Great Britain (GB), which spans the latitude range 50–60° N with strong spatial gradients of topography, soils, rainfall, land use and population density. DOC yields (export per unit area) were positively related to and best predicted by rainfall, peat extent and forest cover, but relatively insensitive to population density or agricultural development. Based on an empirical relationship with land use and rainfall we estimate that the DOC export from the GB land area to the freshwater-seawater interface was 1.15 Tg C year−1 in 2017. The average yield for GB rivers is 5.04 g C m−2 year−1, higher than most of the world’s major rivers, including those of the humid tropics and Arctic, supporting the conclusion that under-representation of smaller river systems draining peat-rich areas could lead to under-estimation of the global land–ocean DOC export. The main anthropogenic factor influencing the spatial distribution of GB DOC exports appears to be upland conifer plantation forestry, which is estimated to have raised the overall DOC export by 0.168 Tg C year−1. This is equivalent to 15% of the estimated current rate of net CO2 uptake by British forests. With the UK and many other countries seeking to expand plantation forest cover for climate change mitigation, this ‘leak in the ecosystem’ should be incorporated in future assessments of the CO2 sequestration potential of forest planting strategies.

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Montràs-Janer, Teresa, Andrew J. Suggitt, Richard Fox, Mari Jönsson, Blaise Martay, David B. Roy, Kevin J. Walker, and Alistair G. Auffret. "Anthropogenic climate and land-use change drive short- and long-term biodiversity shifts across taxa." Nature Ecology & Evolution, February 12, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02326-7.

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AbstractClimate change and habitat loss present serious threats to nature. Yet, due to a lack of historical land-use data, the potential for land-use change and baseline land-use conditions to interact with a changing climate to affect biodiversity remains largely unknown. Here, we use historical land use, climate data and species observation data to investigate the patterns and causes of biodiversity change in Great Britain. We show that anthropogenic climate change and land conversion have broadly led to increased richness, biotic homogenization and warmer-adapted communities of British birds, butterflies and plants over the long term (50+ years) and short term (20 years). Biodiversity change was found to be largely determined by baseline environmental conditions of land use and climate, especially over shorter timescales, suggesting that biodiversity change in recent periods could reflect an inertia derived from past environmental changes. Climate–land-use interactions were mostly related to long-term change in species richness and beta diversity across taxa. Semi-natural grasslands (in a broad sense, including meadows, pastures, lowland and upland heathlands and open wetlands) were associated with lower rates of biodiversity change, while their contribution to national-level biodiversity doubled over the long term. Our findings highlight the need to protect and restore natural and semi-natural habitats, alongside a fuller consideration of individual species’ requirements beyond simple measures of species richness in biodiversity management and policy.

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Critchlow, Rob, Charles A. Cunningham, Humphrey Q. P. Crick, Nicholas A. Macgregor, Michael D. Morecroft, James W. Pearce-Higgins, Tom H. Oliver, Matthew J. Carroll, and Colin M. Beale. "Multi-taxa spatial conservation planning reveals similar priorities between taxa and improved protected area representation with climate change." Biodiversity and Conservation, January 11, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02357-1.

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AbstractProtected area (PA) networks have in the past been constructed to include all major habitats, but have often been developed through consideration of only a few indicator taxa or across restricted areas, and rarely account for global climate change. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) aims to improve the efficiency of biodiversity conservation, particularly when addressing internationally agreed protection targets. We apply SCP in Great Britain (GB) using the widest taxonomic coverage to date (4,447 species), compare spatial prioritisation results across 18 taxa and use projected future (2080) distributions to assess the potential impact of climate change on PA network effectiveness. Priority conservation areas were similar among multiple taxa, despite considerable differences in spatial species richness patterns; thus systematic prioritisations based on indicator taxa for which data are widely available are still useful for conservation planning. We found that increasing the number of protected hectads by 2% (to reach the 2020 17% Aichi target) could have a disproportionate positive effect on species protected, with an increase of up to 17% for some taxa. The PA network in GB currently under-represents priority species but, if the potential future distributions under climate change are realised, the proportion of species distributions protected by the current PA network may increase, because many PAs are in northern and higher altitude areas. Optimal locations for new PAs are particularly concentrated in southern and upland areas of GB. This application of SCP shows how a small addition to an existing PA network could have disproportionate benefits for species conservation.

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Brown, C., R. Prestele, and M. Rounsevell. "An assessment of future rewilding potential in the United Kingdom." Conservation Biology, May 9, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14276.

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AbstractRestoring ecosystems is an imperative for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, and achieving the targets of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. One form of restoration, rewilding, may have particular promise but may also be precluded by requirements for other forms of land use now or in the future. This opportunity space is critical but challenging to assess. We explored the potential area available for rewilding in Great Britain until the year 2080 with a multisectoral land‐use model with several distinct climatic and socioeconomic scenarios. By 2080, areas from 5000 to 7000 km2 were either unmanaged or managed in ways that could be consistent with rewilding across scenarios without conflicting with the provision of ecosystem services. Beyond these areas, another 24,000–42,000 km2 of extensive upland management could provide additional areas for rewilding if current patterns of implementation hold in the future. None of these areas, however, coincided reliably with ecosystems of priority for conservation: peatlands, ancient woodlands, or wetlands. Repeatedly, these ecosystems were found to be vulnerable to conversion. Our results are not based on an assumption of support for or benefits from rewilding and do not account for disadvantages, such as potential losses of cultural landscapes or traditional forms of management, that were beyond the modeled ecosystem services. Nevertheless, potential areas for rewilding emerge in a variety of ways, from intensification elsewhere having a substantial but inadvertent land‐sparing effect, popular demand for environmental restoration, or a desire for exclusive recreation among the wealthy elite. Our findings therefore imply substantial opportunities for rewilding in the United Kingdom but also a need for interventions to shape the nature and extent of that rewilding to maintain priority conservation areas and societal objectives.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Uplands – great britain'

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