The habitat creation model: a decision support system to assess the viability of converting arable land into semi-natural habitat

Since 1992, large areas of land have been removed from arable production in the UK, creating the opportunity to restore some of the semi-natural habitats that had been lost to agriculture. The habitat creation model was developed to identify those vegetation communities that could be created on ex-arable land, together with the management required to establish them and the cost involved. The relational database package, Microsoft Access, was used to develop a decision support system capable of filtering tables of soil and climatic data extracted from the Land Information System (LandIS) database held by the Soil Survey and Land Research Centre, UK. These data were used in conjunction with the tolerance ranges of vegetation communities for a number of parameters (pH, fertility, wetness, droughtiness and temperature) to enable suitable communities to be selected for a specific grid reference or site. The model is a useful tool for policy-making and could be applied to a wide range of agri-environmental schemes.

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