NI Countryside Survey 2007: Broad Habitat Change 1998-2007 . The companion report, NI Countryside Survey 2007 - Field methods and technical manual provides additional methodological detail. Habitat changes between 1998 and 2007 are presented along with any trends from earlier surveys carried out in the late eighties and early nineties.
Changes are presented at the Primary Habitat level as well as Broad Habitat level. Whilst Broad Habitat reporting is a useful classification of habitats for reporting purposes, more detailed exploration of the results is possible using the Primary Habitat information, which is the classification used in the field recording.
Key findings NI Countryside Survey 2007
- Continued semi-natural habitat loss, as was recorded in 1998, but at a lower rate.
- Agricultural land use and rural building continued to be the main processes resulting in habitat loss.
- Scrub/woodland succession in open habitats was much greater.
- Trends to a smaller area of arable crops and to more broadleaf tree planting on agricultural grassland continued.
- Damage to bogs from peat cutting was minor and there was evidence of a reduced grazing pressure in some heath and bog habitats.
An independent exercise to investigate the reliability of Northern Ireland Countryside Survey methods was carried out. This revealed that there were no significant issues and a high level of methodological consistency. The report detailing the results can be found at Quality Assurance of NI Countryside Survey 2007.
The UK Countryside Survey results from 2007 incorporated Broad Habitat results from the Northern Ireland Countryside Survey and can be found at UK Reports from 2007 | Countryside Survey.
NI Countryside Survey 2007 reports can be found in the NI Countryside Survey report repository
