Sustainable Upland Management
Project Status: Completed (See Final
Report Summary)
Type of Project: Scoping Study
Principal Investigator: Dr Klaus Hubacek, University of Leeds
(Email)
Website
Publications, Data and Other Outputs
Objectives
Uplands represent Britain’s most significant carbon store; are a source of potable water; and are vital for biological conservation, extensive livestock farming, tourism, recreation, forestry, game and fishing. Widespread degradation is occurring in response to current land use and management (e.g. fire, grazing regimes and land drainage) and historic atmospheric deposition of pollutants. This may result in the moorland becoming a carbon source and a range of other on-site and downstream impacts, including; altered moorland ecology, reduced biodiversity; increased moorland fires; increased sediment loads with downstream impacts on fisheries; increased water coloration; heavy metal leaching; fluvial and atmospheric carbon loading; and changes to the incidence/severity of downstream flooding. Changes in land management that lead to hydrological and ecosystem rehabilitation in uplands therefore have the potential to deliver social and economic benefits for rural stakeholders at local, regional and national scales. To realise this potential and deliver sustainable upland management, it is necessary to identify relevant management goals, strategies and sustainability indicators, and develop tools to evaluate them in a multi-stakeholder, participatory framework. Impacts of land management cross many academic disciplines. Effective land use recommendations, policy options, and innovative research, from a range of physical and social science disciplines is required.
To address these problems this Scoping Study will develop and apply a novel, multidisciplinary methodological framework to identify, evaluate and monitor sustainable land management in close collaboration with stakeholders, and natural, economic and social scientists. The Peak District National Park (PDNP) will be used as a case study for social and natural scientists to elicit and evaluate visions, management strategies and indicators for sustainable uplands in collaboration with stakeholders. Visions, management strategies and indicators will be adapted and short-listed with stakeholders to minimize trade-offs and optimize synergies, and then integrated into preliminary land use plans. This information will be used to support ongoing moorland restoration by Moors for the Future (MFF) (a not-for-profit research institution in the PDNP). Data and research gaps will be assessed and tools developed to evaluate the environmental, social, economic and carbon impact of upland management strategies in future research.