Assessing land use change and the impacts on semi-natural habitats across England and Wales using four time points between 1930 and 2020

TL;DR

This study examines how land use changes in England and Wales from 1930 to 2020 affected semi-natural habitats, showing which habitats increased or decreased over time.

Contribution

The study provides a detailed historical analysis of land use changes and their impact on semi-natural habitats using four time points over 90 years.

Findings

Broadleaved woodland was the only semi-natural habitat to increase between the 1960s and 2020.

Grassland was largely lost to arable land between the 1960s and 1990, showing the impact of post-war agricultural intensification.

Rough grassland, heath, and wetland experienced the greatest loss between the 1930s and 1960s.

Abstract

Habitat loss and degradation caused by human land use change is one of the major drivers of global biodiversity decline. Understanding historical patterns of land use/land cover (LULC) change over multiple time periods is essential for improving our knowledge of the magnitude and scale of habitat loss, but also for predicting future changes and targeting biodiversity conservation and restoration policy and actions.

This study assesses habitat loss resulting from LULC change in England and Wales between 1930 and 2020 at four different time points.

We digitise a selection of published 1960s land use maps based on detailed field surveys, to use alongside existing published historical data (1930s) and more recent land cover datasets derived from satellite imagery (1990, 2020) for England and Wales.

Broadleaved woodland was the only semi-natural habitat to increase between the 1960s and 2020. Rough grassland, heath and wetland experienced the greatest loss between the 1930s and 1960s, predominantly through conversion to grassland. Grassland, which included species rich neutral grassland and agriculturally improved grassland was largely lost to arable land and this was greatest between the 1960s and 1990. This provides further evidence of post-war agricultural intensification as a key driver of habitat loss in England and Wales. Although this rate declined after 1990, it did not halt completely suggesting LULC change is still an important driver of biodiversity loss.

The patterns revealed in this study may be used to predict where future land use changes are likely to occur or conversely where restoration of semi-natural habitats should be targeted. Knowledge of habitat loss over multiple time periods can increase the likelihood of restoration success since the location and timing of habitat destruction are both known.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-025-02189-8.

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