Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

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GlossaryAcronymsBBA: Breckland Biodiversity AuditCPERC: Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Environmental Records CentreFC: Forestry CommissionNNR: National Nature ReserveNBIS: Norfolk Biodiversity Information ServiceNBN: National Biodiversity NetworkNCA: National Character AreaNE: Natural EnglandNWT: Norfolk Wildlife TrustSAC: Special Areas of ConservationSBRC: Suffolk Biological Records CentreSPA: Special Protection AreasSSSI: Site of Special Scientific InterestSWT: Suffolk Wildlife TrustUEA: University of East AngliaAestivation: hibernation or diapause during a hostile season (e.g. during cold winter or drysummer).Assemblage: a collection of separate species that may co-occur.Community: in plant ecology, attempts have been made to classify the underlying continuousvariation of plant assemblages, that vary along complex ecological gradients (e.g. of nutrients, soilpH, grazing intensity, and climate) into distinct ‘communities’. This can be a useful tool, butcommunities do not exist as clear entities, and local representations of a particular community willbe idiosyncratic and varied.Benthos: organisms living on or within the sediment of aquatic habitats.Guild: different species that share common functional attributes in terms of life history, foraging orfeeding strategy or habitat requirements.Inquiline: is an animal that lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal ofanother species. These are not parasites, because parasites are defined as having a deleteriouseffect on the host species, while inquilines do not.Mere: a groundwater fed waterbody with a fluctuating water level due to a semi permeable baseand lagged response to seasonal fluctuation in the underlying water table.Periglacial: processes involving intense frost or permafrost in regions adjacent to ice sheets.Pingo: an isolated pond or pool, often with a rampart of upheaved soil around the perimeter,caused by ice lens formation during periglacial conditions.Psammophilous: species that has a specialised association with, or requirement for, sandysubstrates particularly bare sand and windblown sand.Rendzina: highly calcareous poorly formed soil formed from raw chalk, marl, limestone orcalcareous drift.Solifluction: soil movement, where waterlogged sediment flows slowly down-slope, overimpermeable material. It occurs in periglacial environments where melting during the warm seasonleads to water saturation in the thawed surface material (active layer), that flows down-slope overimpermeable deeper frozen (permafrost). When the "flow" is due to frost heave that createsundulating corrugation at right angles to the slope, then solifluction can result in striations orperiglacial stripes.10
Introduction“Few of the lowland districts of England have more strikingindividual characteristics than the area known as Breckland.”W.G. Clarke, 1925The Breckland RegionBreckland is a bio-geographical region of Eastern England, covering 1,019 km 2 . The soils arecharacteristically sandy, very freely draining and nutrient-poor. The region has low rainfall, incommon with much of East Anglia, while the climate is more semi-continental and experiencesgreater extremes of temperature. Plant and animal species more commonly associated with steppeor Mediterranean regions can be found in Breckland. This combination of drought-prone soil, lowrainfall and cold winters has strongly influenced human land-use. As a result, this dynamicanthropogenic landscape has supported a distinctive and unique biodiversity unlike any other partof Britain.Since the arrival of agriculturalists approximately six thousand years ago, the region has had adynamic and changing history of land-use. This was historically characterised by large areas ofextensively grazed dry vegetation, including grass or heather dominated heath, areas of lowintensity agriculture and river valleys and fens. The farming of rabbits in large enclosed warrensfrom the early Middle Ages and intensifying through the 16 th -18 th centuries transformed parts ofthe landscape into mobile dune.The Breckland region is often regarded as a ‘heathland region’, so a few words to clarify the variousmeanings of this term will be helpful. The term ‘heath’ can refer to a form of land-use, wherelivestock were grazed (often involving commoners’ rights on land owned by an estate) across areasof low productivity vegetation growing on low fertility soils. In this sense, ‘heath’ is a place namethat relates to a form of land-use. The term has been widely used in the classification of plantcommunities, where it most often relates to dwarf-shrub vegetation that includes Ericoid species(heathers) growing on acidic soils. In this sense, dry lowland heathland developed with grazingmanagement on lowland mineral soils is distinct from either wet heath (in valley or raised mires) or‘moorland’ heath, which developed in upland areas on organic soils in areas of higher rainfall. Butconfusingly, the terms has also been used by ecologists to describe the characteristic low nutrientgrazed and disturbed processes that characterise these vegetation types, and thus grasslandslacking heather species but that are droughted, nutrient poor, disturbed and heavily grazed may bereferred to as ‘grass-heaths’. Throughout this report we refer to grass-heath and heathlandinterchangeably as describing vegetation, and ‘heaths’ as describing places in the landscape.Since the scientific enquiry into natural history began, Breckland has long been recognised amongstentomologists and botanists as a place where distinctive biodiversity could be found. Early naturalhistorians catalogued a range of distinct species that appeared to be restricted to this unusualregion, and were rarely or never encountered elsewhere in Britain. Collectors and natural historiansexplored the warrens, heaths, track-ways and fallow arable fields of the region, making importantdiscoveries. But the importance of this wide range of shifting and dynamic landscape elements11
Page 1 and 2: Securing Biodiversityin BrecklandGu
Page 3 and 4: Commissioning GroupNeil Featherston
Page 5 and 6: Wind-blown sand guild .............
Page 7 and 8: milder winters and increased winter
Page 9: Creating broad ruderal and disturbe
Page 13 and 14: Inland DunesThe 1km wide dune and b
Page 15 and 16: Following the Black Death of the mi
Page 17 and 18: The area of grass-heath declined by
Page 19 and 20: PingosPingos are ground water fed p
Page 21 and 22: Breckland Conservation and the Need
Page 23 and 24: SSSI. The Breckland Forest SSSI cit
Page 25 and 26: The Breckland Biodiversity Audit ha
Page 27 and 28: The Breckland bio-geographic region
Page 29 and 30: polygons of alternating calcareous
Page 31 and 32: quality calcareous fen communities
Page 33 and 34: Figure 2. The extent of Breckland,
Page 35 and 36: Table 3. Grass-heath vegetation in
Page 37 and 38: The Conservation Resource: Designat
Page 39 and 40: All other SSSIs are less than 600 h
Page 41 and 42: GrasslandHeathWoodlandWetlandFlowin
Page 43 and 44: Calcicolous grasslandsShingle, stra
Page 45 and 46: Figure 4. Location of designated si
Page 47 and 48: Figure 6. Location of Plantlife’s
Page 49 and 50: Figure 7. Locations of stations in
Page 51 and 52: Scheme for Stilt & Stalk Flies, Dra
Page 53 and 54: Table 6. Rare vascular plant specie
Page 55 and 56: Recommendation BTO be commissioned
Page 57 and 58: Table 7. Species for which records
Page 59 and 60: Table 8. Descriptions of Red Data B
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If the sub-species was designated b
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Collating and Synthesising Species
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Table 11. Published, documentary an
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Baron de Worms, C.G.M. (1953) Colle
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Guild AnalysisA number of habitat a
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The specific questions for the work
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Findings of the Breckland Biodivers
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Recording Effort and CoverageThere
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Butterfly Conservation (Suffolk) 17
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Norfolk Biodiversity InformationSer
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Figure 11. Number of taxonomic grou
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difference is partly attributable t
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There were Breckland specialist spe
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Figure 13. Proportion of Breckland
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Distribution of Breckland Conservat
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Figure 15. Number of Breckland cons
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Evidence of Climatic Change: Long-T
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Figure 17. Total seasonal precipita
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Biodiversity Implications of the Ch
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Ariel depositions to agricultural s
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the status of Deschampsia flexuosa.
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The relative effects of ploughing,
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Trends in Species Status: Extinctio
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HymenopteraHymenopteraHymenopteraCo
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In addition to the loss of rare lic
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edstraw Galium parisiense (Tansley
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The relative extent of lichen rich
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The Feasibility and Usefulness of t
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Across patch arrangementLandscape c
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Across patcharrangementJuxtapositio
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Delivery of Multiple Species by Int
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Mechanical disturbance to create br
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estricted to road verges, with the
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131
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Records of species from this guild
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© Jeremy Earlywww.natureconservati
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Open with sward mosaics guildChryso
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Grazing without physical disturbanc
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Deadwood in an open-woodland ecoton
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Specific Requirement in a Variety o
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Management to Sustain Dry Terrestri
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Heather should rather be considered
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GrazingrequirementsLightly sheep-gr
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a mosaic of overlapping ploughed, a
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Wind-blown sandThere is great uncer
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IntensityProcess Technique Immediat
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Complex Sward MosaicsComplex sward
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Management for Assemblages of Light
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Management for Species of Physicall
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Key Recommendations for Cultivated
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Shallow cultivation is preferable t
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Maidscross Hill is largely overgrow
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Ecological Requirements of Wetland
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numbers of conservation priority sp
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Recommendation Requirements of wetl
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Restored pingo complexAt Great Hock
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the difficulties of achieving this
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Strategic Challenges to Biodiversit
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Table 22. Problems arising from poo
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Recommendation: Natural England and
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It is therefore vital to carefully
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Creating networks for resilienceTo
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More ambitious possibilities that c
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Figure 34. Example of a potential c
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Connectivity networks© Neal Armour
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and consider whether these repeated
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Ensure that scrub removal, ploughin
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ReferencesADAS. (1997) Biological M
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Haes, E. C. M. & Harding, P. T. (19
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Sastre, B.(2003). Ground spider com
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