Moorland Deep Peat AP Status

notPlanned

Several data layers were used in the geoprocessing to create the Moorland Deep AP Status data. The approach involved identifying areas of deep peat within the Moorland Line using soil, geological drift and habitat mapping, and using aerial photographs taken between 1999-2008, to create maps of visible peatland status and land use. National Soils map data © Cranfield University, BGS geology data and blanket bog data taken from the National Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) were used to show the location of peaty soils. This provided an indicative layer for the area of peat and peat soils in England. Soils classed as “deep peaty soils” were selected for use in this project. Moorland line classification was used to select upland areas from within this mapped area of deep peaty soils. The moorland line is mapped to represent areas of unimproved, moorland vegetation representations to remove areas of non-moorland land from the moorland line. As such, it represents our best mapping of upland moorland in England, and should contain no areas of non-moorland vegetation larger than 5ha in size. This provides a map of deep peaty soils under moorland vegetation. In addition, all areas under 1ha were deleted from the data set. The aim of this was to remove all areas which were smaller than the minimum mappable unit for this exercise and to reduce the total number of polygons to be assessed, while maintaining the greatest possible assessment area. More information can be found in the Natural England Commissioned Report NECR089 Mapping the status of upland peat using aerial photographs on Natural England’s Access to Evidence site http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/. Datasets used; 1:50 000 scale drift mapping - BGS National Soils map - Cranfield University (NSRI) Moorland Line - RPA National Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP), National Parks & Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) – NE