Limestone Pavement Habitat Network for Nature Recovery in Northern Ireland

A 2020 project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund produced habitat network maps for priority habitats in Northern Ireland. Ulster Wildlife, National Trust NI, RSPB NI, and Woodland Trust NI collaborated to create these vector datasets using the Natural England methodology. The maps categorize land based on its potential for habitat restoration and connectivity enhancement.

Use Cases

• Prioritizing land for habitat restoration based on network categories indicating favorability.
• Enhancing ecological connectivity by identifying areas effective for linking existing habitat patches.
• Supporting strategic conservation decisions by integrating these maps with on-site survey data.

Strengths

• Based on a published methodology (Edwards et al., 2020) with defined network categories.
• Covers all terrestrial and intertidal priority habitats in Northern Ireland.
• Funded by a major grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The maps are not a comprehensive land cover depiction and do not replace on-site surveys.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Maps produced using the Natural England habitat network methodology applied to Northern Ireland.

Time Range

Project initiated in 2020.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Northern Ireland