UK Habs or Habitat Monitoring is an essential method of understanding and assessing the positive and negative impacts that human activity has on biodiversity and ecosystems.
Established in 2013, UKHabs was designed by 5 people to create a system into which all UK habitats would fit.
Why was UKHabs required?
UKHabs is a recent, and comprehensive approach to mapping habitats up and down the UK. It is quickly becoming the standard method of this type of survey.
UKHabs helps to:
- Create consistency
- Create a unified system for recording and reporting
- Identify differences between habitat classifications
- Provide consistent and contextual data for ‘Environmental and Social Impact assessments’
- Provide consistent and contextual data for the application of Mitigation Hierarchy
- Provide consistent and contextual data to plan for ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’, and ‘Detailed Green Infrastructure Plans’
- Create consistency for bodies such as ‘Natural England’, ‘Scottish Natural Heritage’, ‘Natural Resources Wales’, ‘Department of the Environment Northern Ireland’, and ‘JNCC’. Allowing these bodies to report on the habitats of the UK and of Europe.
Features of UKHabs
- Designed using existing classifications
- Fully translatable & hierarchal system that integrates with all major classifications across the UK and Europe which also works with legacy data
- Designed to work with large-scale projects and data e.g. CEH Land Cover Map
- Habitat and architecture language used within UKHabs is easily recognisable by ecologists
- There is a hierarchy with 5 nested levels (primary habitat types), plus secondary level codes that can be linked to each primary habitat level which allows for clarity and consistency
How Apex Ecology can help
Our ecologists have experience and knowledge in using the UKHabs methodology. They have the expertise and skills to provide an individual and thorough assessment for a whole range of customers.
A UK Habitat Classification Assessment has become a core service that we provide here at Apex Ecology.
Need more information on our services, please get in touch.