Alasdair Rae

25 Pages·2017·12.08 MB·English

LAND COVER
A
ATLAS
OF THE
UNITED
KINGDOM

Alasdair Rae

2017
INFORMATION
This Atlas – and accompanying online map set – is based on analysis of Corine Land Cover data from 2012. The Corine
programme – sometimes referred to as ‘CORINE’ – is a programme of the European Commission. CORINE is short for
‘Coordination of information on the environment’ and the programme has three aims, as stated in the European
Commission’s CORINE information document:

• to compile information on the state of the environment with regard to certain topics which have priority for all
the Member States of the Community;
• to coordinate the compilation of data and the organization of information within the Member States or at
international level;
• to ensure that information is consistent and that data are compatible.

Source: European Environment Agency, 1995

The Corine project covers 39 European countries, but this Atlas covers only the United Kingdom. The Corine Land Cover
data for 2012 is licenced under an Open Government Licence. The following statement must be cited when using the
data presented in this Atlas:

“Copyright rests with the European Commission; Acknowledgement: Produced by the University of Leicester, The Centre
for Landscape and Climate Research and Specto Natura and supported by Defra and the European Environment
Agency under Grant Agreement 3541/B2012/R0-GIO/EEA.55055 with funding by the European Union.; If you reuse this
data, you should cite: Cole, B., King, S., Ogutu, B., Palmer, D., Smith, G., Balzter, H. (2015). Corine Land Cover 2012 for the
UK, Jersey and Guernsey. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/32533dd6-7c1b-43e1-
b892-e80d61a5ea1d; this resource is made available under the terms of the Open Government Licence
(http://eidc.ceh.ac.uk/administration-folder/tools/ceh-standard-licence-texts/open-government-licence-corine/plain)”.

Under the terms of the Open Government Licence, users are free to do the following, so long as the source is
acknowledged correctly:

• copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information;
• adapt the Information;
• exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other
Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

How is Corine Land Cover (CLC) data produced? It is created through interpretation of high resolution satellite imagery,
as part of the Copernicus programme. CLC2012 (the data used in this Atlas) is based on satellite data from 2011-2012
and is accurate to about 25 metres. At national and sub-national scales, therefore, Corine Land Cover data provides a
good general overview of what our land is used for and covered by.

This Atlas represents an attempt to make the data more meaningful and accessible for a UK audience. If you find it
useful, or have any questions, feel free to contact Alasdair Rae (the author) at [email protected].

Atlas version: 1.2

DOI: 10.15131/shef.data.5266495
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION 2

2. LAND COVER IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 4

3. LAND COVER IN ENGLAND, NORTHERN IRELAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES 8

4. SOME LOCAL MAPS OF CORINE LAND COVER 9

5. SUMMARY 15

APPENDIX 1: More about Corine 16

APPENDIX 2: Supplementary tables 19

High resolution versions of the Corine Land Cover maps in this Atlas, for every local authority in the United
Kingdom, can be downloaded from:

https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.5219956

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1. INTRODUCTION in order for them to be useful, someone needs to
How much of the UK is urban? How much is arable turn the raw data into meaningful information that
land? How much is forest? Questions like these people can actually use, and that’s what I have
arise from time to time in the media, in policy attempted here.
discussions, and also in conversation, so that’s one
of the reasons why I decided to undertake this
Atlas project (which includes a set of online maps). What’s in the Atlas?
I wanted to understand better what the United This Atlas is a short report supplement to a set of
Kingdom is made of. I wanted to know how much online maps illustrating land cover in the UK’s 391
of the country we might justifiably classify as local authority areas. It begins by taking an
‘urban’ and how much we cannot. As it turns out, overview of land cover in the United Kingdom, with
not much of the land area of the country is actually a map and some summary statistics. Following
‘urban’, even if it does account for more than 80% this, in section three I also look briefly at land cover
of the population. in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
As you will see, the four parts of the UK have quite
This Atlas uses Corine Land Cover data from 2012 different patterns of land cover (see Appendix 2).
to show the variety and volume of different land
uses across the United Kingdom. Put simply, In the fourth section of the Atlas, I also include
Corine is an inventory of European land cover some more localised maps of a selection of local
divided into 44 different classes, including authority areas, so that you can see more of the
categories like ‘broad-leaved forest’ (about 2% of detail contained in the Corine dataset. I have done
the UK’s land cover), ‘pastures’ (about 29%, the this so that local people, including planners,
most of any class) and ‘continuous’ and architects, environmentalists, and anyone with an
‘discontinuous’ urban fabric (together, just under interest in land cover more generally, can see how
6% of the UK). To put this into a little bit of context, different areas are classified. The Atlas isn’t perfect,
peat bogs cover about 10% of the land area of the but it’s my attempt to bring the data to life in a
UK. But more on this kind of thing later. meaningful way.

Why create a UK Land Cover Atlas? A few words about Corine data
The main reason I wanted to create this Atlas is Before going any further, it’s necessary to highlight
that I couldn’t find anything like it online or in print. that despite the name, the Corine Land Cover
I wanted a basic overview of the UK’s land cover categories include areas that are not actually land.
that was simple and accessible. Plenty UK Corine Water bodies – such as rivers and estuaries – are
Land Cover maps can be found online, but I also also included in the Corine classification system
wanted to see what the data looked like at a local (see Appendix 1). The national overviews for the
level (for local authority areas). I wanted some whole United Kingdom, and the data for each part
basic statistics too, such as how much of the UK is of the UK, do not include areas of sea or inshore
classed as ‘natural grasslands’ (about 6%) or how waters but you will see from the local maps that in
much is ‘moors and heathland’ (about 8%). most cases rivers, lakes and lochs are included in
the calculations for local authority areas.
One of the great things about these kinds of
datasets is that they are open and free to use. But

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Another important consideration to keep in mind If you have seen any Corine Land Cover maps
when looking through this Atlas is that the Corine before, you will notice that the maps in this Atlas
classification system has three different levels. At have a different colour scheme. For example, in the
its most basic, land cover is classified into one of European Environment Agency Corine maps
five types – ‘agricultural areas’, ‘artificial surfaces’, online, ‘peat bogs’ are blue, but in this Atlas they
‘forest and semi-natural areas’, ‘water bodies’ and are a brownish colour, which I think is a better
‘wetlands’. The next level of the classification has reflection of what they look like on the ground.
15 land use categories and at its most detailed Furthermore, I wanted to keep blue shades for
there are 44. More details of each land use type are water. Undoubtedly, the colour choices on any
given in Appendix 1 but you can see the individual map with more than 30 classes can make
classes in the maps in the online Atlas. interpretation difficult, but there should be enough
differentiation so you can tell what’s what.
This Atlas is based on the most detailed Corine
data, which covers 44 different land use classes. In As noted above, I have included a small sub-set of
the United Kingdom, no land is classified as maps in this Atlas, including some local maps for
‘glacier’, ‘olive grove’, ‘agro-forestry’, ‘annual crops each part of the UK. The full set of high-resolution
associated with permanent crops’ or maps are available online, via the University of
‘sclerophyllous vegetation’ (a kind of scrubland, Sheffield Online Research Data repository (ORDA),
commonly found in hot countries), so this gives us hosted by Figshare.
a total of 39 potential different land use categories
in the UK (five are water body categories).
Interpreting the maps
The maps presented below, and in particular the
A few words about the maps full set online, provide a detailed account of land
The maps in this Atlas represent my attempt to cover in the UK. However, care must be taken
make this fascinating, important dataset more when reading the maps. For example, if we see that
easily digestible by those with an interest in the an area is classified as ‘discontinuous urban fabric’
subject. It is also partly an attempt to engage it will be displayed in a solid red colour on the
people who might not otherwise care about land map. In reality, of course, this will include a variety
cover in the first instance. As a consequence, I have of land cover, including houses, gardens, sheds,
tried to make the maps as simple as possible. In garages and other physical artefacts and structures
order to aid orientation, I have added some place which fit within the ‘discontinuous urban fabric’
names, road lines and railways. Corine definition, which is as follows:

Each of the 391 local authority maps in the online “Most of the land is covered by structures: buildings,
Atlas has a map key associated with it. This lists all roads and artificially surfaced areas associated with
the potential Corine Land Cover classes in the vegetated areas and bare soil, which occupy
dataset and it shows what percentage of each discontinuous but significant surfaces.”
local authority is covered by each particular Corine
class. For values below 1%, and particularly very In order to understand exactly what the maps
low values under 0.2%, I have shown these in a show, I recommend reading Appendix 1, in
lighter coloured font to indicate the uncertainty addition to the Corine Technical Library
associated with very low values. documentation online.

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2. LAND COVER IN THE UK UK lives in urban areas (World Bank, 2016) it is not
As noted above, the UK contains 39 out of the 44 surprising that some people hold the opposite to
different Corine Land Cover classes and displays a be true. However, from a land cover point of view,
great deal of landscape diversity. However, this the United Kingdom is in fact dominated by
includes several non-land categories, including pasture and arable land.
‘sea and ocean’, ‘estuaries’ and ‘water courses. If
we remove the non-land categories, we are left If we look at the other end of the scale, we can see
with a total of 34 different Corine Land Cover some land cover for the ‘vineyard’ and ‘rice fields’
classes in the UK. land use categories. These cover such tiny portions
of land (0.0001% and 0.0003% respectively) that
Looking at the map on the next page gives an they barely register. It should be borne in mind that
overview of the geography of the different land use the Corine Land Cover classification correctly picks
classes in the UK. As you can see, ‘pastures’ and up the existence of these uses in the UK, but the
‘non-irrigated arable land’ account for more than exact extent of coverage is so low that the precise
half of the land area of the country, though this areas they cover needs to be treated with some
differs significantly across the nations of the UK. caution. It is certainly correct to say that there are
vineyards and rice cultivation in the UK, but they
The ‘pastures’ category covers nearly 29% of the are undoubtedly quite unusual land uses.
land area and ‘non-irrigated arable land’ covers
just over 27%. The former refers to areas of dense Other land use categories of interest to emerge
grass cover that are mainly used for grazing (often from the Corine Land Cover dataset include
by cattle) but may also be used for fodder. ‘Non- ‘industrial or commercial units’ (0.8%), ‘green
irrigated arable land’ refers to areas with cereals, urban areas’ (0.3%), ‘airports’ (0.2%) and
fodder crops and root crops, among others. ‘continuous urban fabric’ (0.1%). This last category
relates to the very most densely populated areas of
Following these two categories are ‘peat bogs’ the UK and differs from ‘discontinuous urban
(9.4%), ‘moors and heathland’ (7.5%) and ‘natural fabric’ only in terms of it being subject to the
grasslands’ (5.8%). The first artificial land cover criteria that at least 80% of the total surface area
class appears in sixth place on the list – within this class should be impermeable.
‘discontinuous urban fabric’ covers 5.3% of the
land area of the UK. This accounts for most of the The map and table on the following two pages
land in the UK covered by structures. Rounding out illustrates this land cover diversity in more detail. It
the top ten in terms of land coverage are is clear that the UK is a nation of landscape
‘coniferous forest’ (5.1%), ‘broad-leaved forest’ diversity and – in places – significant population
(2.2%), ‘transitional woodland-shrub’ (1.4%) and density. The extent to which this varies within
‘sport and leisure facilities’ (1.1%). England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is
explored in a little more detail in subsequent
These figures may come as a surprise to you if you sections. To put it simply, though, it can be said
think of the UK as a particularly urban, crowded that England is by far the most urbanised (8%),
country. It may feel like a very densely populated Wales and Northern Ireland are both more than
urban nation, but the reality is that the vast 50% pasture land and Scotland is 50% peat bog,
majority of the land area of the UK is not built on. moors and forest. But these headline figures are far
However, given that 83% of the population of the from being the whole story!

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5
UK Corine Land Cover
Corine Land Cover 2012 (UK) Sq Km % of Land
1 Pastures 71,069.2 28.7129
2 Non-irrigated arable land 66,954.9 27.0506
3 Peat bogs 23,281.1 9.4059
4 Moors and heathland 18,546.8 7.4931
5 Natural grasslands 14,407.2 5.8207
6 Discontinuous urban fabric 13,183.5 5.3263
7 Coniferous forest 12,700.1 5.1310
8 Broad-leaved forest 5,368.1 2.1688
9 Transitional woodland-shrub 3,402.6 1.3747
10 Sport and leisure facilities 2,840.1 1.1474
11 Intertidal flats 2,746.0 1.1094
12 Mixed forest 2,723.9 1.1005
13 Sparsely vegetated areas 2,572.3 1.0392
14 Industrial or commercial units 2,036.2 0.8227
15 Land principally occupied by agriculture, with significant areas of natural vegetation 1,292.0 0.5220
16 Mineral extraction sites 717.1 0.2897
17 Green urban areas 657.7 0.2657
18 Airports 493.3 0.1993
19 Beaches, dunes, sands 490.2 0.1980
20 Salt marshes 460.9 0.1862
21 Complex cultivation patterns 360.0 0.1454
22 Continuous urban fabric 326.8 0.1320
23 Bare rocks 208.1 0.0841
24 Port areas 147.7 0.0597
25 Inland marshes 145.8 0.0589
26 Road and rail networks and associated land 121.7 0.0492
27 Fruit trees and berry plantations 91.9 0.0371
28 Construction sites 77.3 0.0312
29 Dump sites 74.8 0.0302
30 Burnt areas 17.1 0.0069
31 Rice fields 1.1 0.0005
32 Salines 0.7 0.0003
33 Permanently irrigated land 0.4 0.0001
34 Vineyards 0.3 0.0001

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The headline figures for the UK in the map and heathland’, at 29.4%. As mentioned above, the
table above are interesting in themselves but they Corine Land Cover classification includes 44
mask a lot of localised variation in land cover. different land cover types in total, although the UK
Unsurprisingly, the City of London is the local only contains 39. Unsurprisingly, the areas with the
authority with the highest percentage of area greatest number of different land cover classes
classified as ‘continuous urban fabric’, at 97.6%. tend to be the largest geographic areas.
For ‘discontinuous urban fabric’, the London
Borough of Lewisham comes out top, at 87.1%. At the top of the list of areas with the greatest
Also in Greater London, Barking and Dagenham Corine Land Cover diversity is Dumfries and
has the highest percentage of land cover classified Galloway in the south of Scotland which, according
as ‘industrial or commercial units’, at 22.8%. to my analysis, contains 29 different Corine Land
Further details can be seen in the online maps that Cover classes. This is followed by Perth and Kinross
accompany this Atlas (see also Appendix 2). (28), Aberdeenshire (28), Cornwall (27), Highland
(27), Northumberland (26), Angus (26) and Argyll
The local authority in the UK with the highest and Bute (25). The other end of the scale is
percentage of land area classified as ‘green urban dominated by areas in Greater London. The City of
areas’ is Westminster, at 21.1%. This is of course London, for example, contains only ‘continuous
not surprising when you consider that it contains urban fabric’ (plus a little water) whereas Islington
Hyde Park, St James’s Park and Regent’s Park. Also contains only the two ‘urban’ types. Again, given
in Greater London, the Borough of Richmond upon the built-up nature of London, this is hardly
Thames is classified as being 40.9% ‘sport and surprising.
leisure facilities’, much of which are golf courses.
What is perhaps surprising is the extent to which
Other interesting extracts from the localised some of the ‘urban’ local authority areas of major
analysis of the national Corine dataset include the UK cities are in fact not very ‘urban’ at all, when we
fact that South Holland in Lincolnshire is 93.3% consider land cover. This is often a result of ‘over-
‘non-irrigated arable land’ and Armagh City, bounding’, where the administrative boundary of
Banbridge and Craigavon in Northern Ireland is the city – as in Leeds – covers an area that
classified as being 84.6% ‘pastures’. The Isles of stretches far beyond the urban fabric. In the case of
Scilly, in a similar vein, are classified as 96.2% ‘land Leeds, this means that we see 19 different Corine
principally occupied by agriculture’. The area with classes and the largest of these is ‘non-irrigated
the highest percentage of land cover classified as arable land’, at 32.5% of the total land area. This
‘natural grasslands’ is Blaenau Gwent, in Wales compares to a figure of 27.5% classed as
(28.8%). ‘discontinuous urban fabric’.

If we look at forestry cover, Moray in north east Also in West Yorkshire, the local authority area of
Scotland is 21.6% ‘coniferous forest’, and Mole Bradford is classified as 42.8% ‘pastures’, 11.0%
Valley in Surrey (just beyond the M25) is 16.7% ‘peat bogs’ and 26.5% ‘discontinuous urban fabric’.
‘broad-leaved forest’. The Scottish local authority Such curiosities are of course related to how we
of Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Outer Hebrides) has the draw administrative boundaries but it also
highest percentage of land classified as ‘peat bogs’ demonstrates the diversity of land cover in some
(60.9%) and, also in Scotland, Angus has the areas we often think of as being particularly
greatest percentage covered by ‘moors and ‘urban’.

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3. LAND COVER IN ENGLAND, NORTHERN ‘moors and heathland’ and 5.7% ‘non-irrigated
IRELAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES arable land’. In Wales, the two main ‘urban’ land
As stated above, this Atlas is a short text cover classes account for 3.6% of the land.
supplement to the set of maps published online
for every local authority in the UK. However, given On the following pages you will see a selection of
the different political and governance contexts localised Corine Land Cover 2012 maps for
within the UK, and the way land is managed in different parts of the UK. These maps are extracted
different parts of the county, it is worth looking from the complete set of UK local authority land
briefly at land cover in England, Northern Ireland, cover maps in the associated online map set. I
Scotland and Wales separately. have chosen these in an attempt to illustrate the
diversity of land cover in the UK and to highlight
England is by far the most urbanised part of the UK some of the more interesting areas.
and the two main Corine ‘urban’ classes account
for just over 8% of the total land area. For example you can see that, according to the
‘Discontinuous urban fabric’ (7.9%) is the third Corine classification, Tonbridge and Malling in the
largest category. The largest two land cover classes south east of England is 7.3% ‘fruit and berry
in England are ‘non-irrigated arable land’ at 43.1% plantations’, and Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales is
and ‘pastures’, at 30.4%. The fourth largest 4.2% ‘mineral extraction sites’. Each of the maps
category by percentage in England is ‘broad- lists all potential UK Corine Land Cover types and if
leaved forest’, at 2.7%. A full breakdown of Corine an area contains a particular land cover type it will
Land Cover in England, in addition to the other be indicated in the horizontal bars, in addition to a
nations of the UK, is provided in Appendix 2. figure indicating what percent of the land area is
accounted for by that class, as shown below (from
Northern Ireland is dominated by the ‘pastures’ Blackburn with Darwen, in case you’re curious).
Corine Land Cover category, with 67.1% of the land
in this class. This is followed by ‘natural grasslands’
at 7.3%, ‘moors and heathland’ at 4.5% and ‘peat
bogs’ at 4.4%. ‘Continuous’ and ‘discontinuous’
urban fabric account for just over 3% of the land
area of Northern Ireland.

In Scotland, almost a quarter of the land (23.6%) is
classified as ‘peat bogs’ on the Corine Land Cover
2012 measure used here. This is followed by
‘pastures’ at 18.7%, ‘moors and heathland’ at
15.6%, ‘coniferous forest’ at 11.1% and ‘non-
irrigated arable land’ at 10.1%. The two main
‘urban’ classes in Scotland account for only 1.6%
of the land cover.

In Wales, the single largest land cover category is
‘pastures’, which cover 52.4% of the land area. This
is followed by 11.5% ‘natural grasslands’, 8.0%

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