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Lowland heath

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Lowland heath is heathland in the parts of Britain where people live and farm throughout the year. Following a definition by Derek Ratcliffe, the term is not tied to any particular altitude.[1] Britain is of global importance for oceanic and Atlantic heaths.[1]

Characteristics

Heathlands develop on soils that are low in nutrients and lacking in bases.[1] Their vegetation is dominated by dwarf shrubs, most of them members of the heather family. These grow in a mosaic with bare ground, grassland, lichens, mosses and ferns, with scrub and trees scattered through and around them, and the mix is constantly changing.[1]

Heaths are landscapes bound up with pastoral farming, and most British heaths are fragments of such landscapes.[1]

History

A pollen study found that heather made up about 8.4% of the pollen around 7,000 years ago, suggesting dwarf-shrub vegetation over about 1.5 million hectares; tree cover at that time was about 58%.[2] Livestock arrived with Neolithic farming about 6,000 years ago, and Neolithic people cleared trees to make room for crops and pasture.[3]

Heaths were once found throughout the lowlands. Many were lost to mechanised, intensive farming and cheap fertilisers.[1] On the Isle of Wight, for example, heathland covered about 4,120 hectares around 1600, a little more than a tenth of the island.[4] By the 1980s only about 130 hectares remained, a loss of around 97%, and conservation work has since recovered only a few tens of hectares.[5]

Wildlife

In Britain, nightjars are largely restricted to heathland and to open ground within forestry plantations. Adders hibernate in dry bracken litter and bask among the fronds.[6]

Management and conservation

The spread of bracken has been linked to changes in management: cropping of bracken stopped, burning became too frequent, and cattle and ponies were replaced by sheep.[6]

Grazing by large herbivores holds back the regrowth of trees, and together with burning and felling it can reduce woodland cover.[7] Chatters cites a 2009 estimate that the Forestry Commission estate in England included more than 30,000 hectares of plantations on lowland heath. Dense stands of non-native conifers shade out most heathland wildlife.[8]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Chatters, Clive (2021). "British heathlands". Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. pp. 16–18. ISBN 9781472964779.
  2. ↑ Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 27. ISBN 9781472964779.
  3. ↑ Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 29. ISBN 9781472964779.
  4. ↑ Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 39. ISBN 9781472964779.
  5. ↑ Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 45. ISBN 9781472964779.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 66. ISBN 9781472964779.
  7. ↑ Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 72. ISBN 9781472964779.
  8. ↑ Chatters, Clive (2021). Heathland. British Wildlife Collection (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Wildlife. p. 70. ISBN 9781472964779.
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