Wood Pasture and Parkland Inventory for England, 1976 Onwards

Natural England's provisional inventory of wood-pasture and parkland areas across England, containing 9,815 polygons covering approximately 278,004.57 hectares. The data was collated from existing inventories, local record centres, and councils, and verified using historical maps and aerial photography from 1976 onward. Each record includes a confidence level based on source data quality.

Use Cases

• Modeling habitat connectivity and fragmentation based on polygon distribution and tree density rules described in the methodology.
• Assessing land cover change over time by comparing this inventory with other temporal land-use datasets.
• Planning conservation efforts for semi-natural habitats using the mapped extent and confidence levels of parkland areas.
• Studying the distribution of veteran trees and parkland ecosystems at a national scale.

Strengths

• Contains 9,815 distinct geographic polygons, providing detailed spatial coverage.
• Covers approximately 278,004.57 hectares, offering a substantial area for analysis.
• Includes a confidence level for each record, indicating data reliability.
• Temporal coverage extends from 1976 onwards, allowing for longitudinal study.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The inventory is provisional, and some habitat extents were difficult to determine from aerial photography, as noted in the description.

Provenance

Source

Natural England, incorporating Ordnance Survey data.

Collection Method

Collation of data from existing national and local sources, verified using Epoch 1-4 maps and aerial photography.

Time Range

1976 onwards

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 12:06:36.888144; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England