Important arable plant areas - criteria for the assessment of arable sites

摘要

A system for the evaluation of assemblages of vascular plants of arable land inBritain is required in order to enable the conservation value of sites to be assessed.The method proposed here is designed to locate sites of international, national orlocal importance as an aid to the allocation of funds and conservation effort. Sitesare given a score that is the sum of scores assigned to individual species present, onthe basis of their IUCN conservation status, their recent population trend in Britainand on the number of 10 km squares in which they are present. The system isdesigned to be robust and applicable throughout the country. Initial testing of themethod has shown that eight sites in Britain meet the standards for Important ArablePlant Areas.