Using spatial frameworks to target agri-environment schemes

摘要

The implementation of the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) new agri-environment scheme, Environmental Stewardship, brings new opportunities to enhance biodiversity within the English countryside. By combining biological, geographic and environmental datasets with spatial targeting techniques, English Nature has demonstrated how the resources available through the agri-environment schemes can be used to maximise the benefits to biodiversity. Using this process we are now looking to identify areas where wider scheme priorities (e.g. historic environment and natural resource protection) overlap and where accurate targeting can link these objectives within the wider landscape.