The UK Habitat Classification Background
Habitat monitoring is essential to assess both positive and negative impacts of human activity on biodiversity and ecosystems. It is carried out by a wide range of academic, public and professional ecologists and needs to provide a consistent basis for identifying and recording species assemblages and ecological communities.
UKHab was needed to:
- Address inconsistencies between habitat and vegetation classifications
Achieve consistency – collect once, use many times - Allow Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage, Natural Resources Wales, Department of the Environment Northern Ireland and JNCC to report consistently on habitats of European and national significance.
- Provide uniform habitat and contextual data for Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, the application of the Mitigation Hierarchy, planning for Biodiversity Net Gain and detailed Green Infrastructure plans.
- Achieve a unified system for new recording that would translate to as many of the existing systems and heritage data as possible.
Work on UKHab began in 2013. A Working Group of five people designed and created the system to ensure that all UK habitats would fit into a hierarchy that fitted with the MAES categories at the European scale down to the very small areas of some Annex 1 habitats in the UK. The Working Group was advised and supported by an Implementation Panel of individuals from Non-Statutory Conservation Organisations, CIEEM and industrial partners. In 2015 the system was trialled by a number of volunteers from the ecological surveying community and the system was released in early 2018. Throughout CIEEM has provided guidance through its Professional Affairs Committee.
Key Features of the UK Habitat Classification
UKHab has been designed to build on existing classifications. It is a fully translatable, hierarchical system that integrates with all major classifications in use in the UK and Europe. The system includes translation tables that allow legacy datasets to be translated into UKHab and for habitat data collected using other systems to be seamlessly integrated. For example, UKHab is designed to integrate with large-scale GIS-based habitat datasets, such as the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) Land Cover Map, which gives a huge advantage for scoping large-scale surveys and for sharing data regionally, nationally and internationally.
The architecture and most habitat names used in UKHab should be readily recognisable to all ecologists working in this field. The fully comprehensive UK Habitat Classification Professional Edition is a hierarchy with five nested ‘Levels’. In addition to the primary habitat types, there is a list of secondary codes that can be linked to each primary habitat.
The combination of primary habitats and secondary codes is a major strength of the system, allowing habitat mosaics, habitat management, origins and other environmental and species features to be added directly to each coded primary habitat. This removes the need for complex target notes and substantially increases consistency and spatial accuracy of recording important features by attaching secondary codes directly to habitat polygons or linear features.
About UKHAB Ltd
The UKHab Directors
Bill Butcher, Bob Edmonds, Lisa Norton and Jo Treweek
UK Habitat Classification Documents
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