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Ecosystem Interactions on the Somerset Levels

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Ecosystem Interactions on the Somerset Levels NR0149: Ecosystem Interactions on the Somerset Levels Final report Prepared by LUC September 2015 Planning & EIA LUC BRISTOL Offices also in: Land Use Consultants Ltd th Registered in England Design 12 Floor Colston Tower London Registered number: 2549296 Landscape Planning Colston Street Bristol Glasgow Registered Office: Landscape Management BS1 4XE Edinburgh 43 Chalton Street Ecology T +44 (0)117 929 1997 London NW1 1JD Mapping & Visualisation [email protected] FS 566056 EMS 566057 LUC uses 100% recycled paper Contents Executive Summary i 1 Introduction 1 Project objectives 1 Research context 3 Methodology 8 The impact of flood events on the project 9 The structure of this report 10 2 Defining current ecosystem interactions 11 The ecosystem services delivered by the Somerset Levels 11 The natural assets and pathways associated with the services 15 Mapping priorities areas for service delivery 17 The synergies and trade-offs between services 24 The vision of future service delivery 26 3 Mechanisms to achieve integrated and optimised service delivery 28 Using economic valuation to understand and prioritise the benefits provided by the selected services 28 Engagement of the key actors involved in the delivery of the selected services 35 4 Anticipating changes and planning positive outcomes 39 The drivers of change acting on the services 39 The national and local policy framework for delivering change 41 Getting local agreement on priorities and achieving co-ordinated action 45 5 Findings and transferability of results 49 Overall findings 49 Lessons for achieving co-ordinated planning of service delivery in other areas 51 6 Bibliography 53 Executive Summary This study can be summarised as ‘Research to encompassing the lower floodplains of the Rivers examine and facilitate debate on the interactions Brue, Parrett and Tone. This is a flat landscape between competing land use priorities on the of rivers and wetlands, artificially drained, Somerset Levels, developing analytical tools that irrigated and modified to allow productive identify synergies and trade-offs between the farming. Livestock farming is the economic natural services that the area provides, mainstay, and the primary land use pattern is contributing to more effective policy one of summer grazing with hay or silage interventions and lessons that can be applied to production. Settlements tend to be other areas of lowland farmland in the UK’. concentrated on the higher ground around the fringes of the area or within the area. The area The project has sought to gain a better is subject to a number of statutory designations understanding of the interactions between the that seek to protect its natural and heritage ecosystem services provided by the Somerset assets. These include the Somerset Levels and Levels at three different levels: Moors Special Protection Area (SPA) which • Spatial interactions – understanding the recognises the international importance of the patterns of land use priorities, focussing flood plain and coastal grazing marsh habitat for particularly on where there are competing overwintering and breeding wading birds. priorities between different ecosystem services. Principal benefits and services provided by • Social interactions – understanding how ecosystems in the area: Implicit in the different groups of people (e.g. landowners and concept of ecosystem services (defined as is the managers, local communities, statutory bodies “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems”1) and non-governmental organisations) are is the understanding that single areas of land or involved in providing and using different natural resource can deliver many different services, and the competing and supporting ecosystem services and that management relationships between them. activities that favour some services may constrain or damage the delivery of others. • Policy interactions – understanding how public Natural England’s recently prepared National policy at both national and local levels regulates Character Area profiles provide useful evidence and supports the delivery of different services, of the extent of 19 different ecosystem services and how, collectively, policy instruments are in the project area. Five of these services stand effective at balancing and optimising the public out as being particularly significant because of benefits provided by the services. their international importance (biodiversity; and During the period of the study, the project area sense of history), their national importance was subjected to two major flood events, the (climate regulation through the storage of latter (in the winter of 2013/14) unprecedented organic carbon in soils), their very high local in recent times. These events presented a socio-economic importance (flood risk major issue for the study methodology. The management) and because they provide the severity of the short term issues of recovery dominant land use (food provision). from flooding made theoretical questions about Understanding the interactions between long term land and water management seem ecosystem services: A range of methodologies irrelevant. As a result, the nature of this project have been developed in the UK for mapping changed from one that sought to inform ecosystem services to inform decision making. decisions and take a direct role in influencing This study has used publically available spatial outcomes to one of observation and passive data which either directly or indirectly represents assessment. ecosystem service delivery to map each of the The project area is defined by the Somerset selected services. These maps, and analysis of Levels and Moors National Character Area optimal land and water management (NCA), focussing on the southern two thirds of requirements, show that there are strong the NCA below Weston-super-Mare, synergies between the three services of 1 MEA (2005) i biodiversity, a sense of history and soil carbon Countryside Stewardship agri-environment storage. Broadly speaking, the same forms of scheme means that it is likely to be more tightly management (usually raised water levels and focussed (spatially and in its outcomes) on the extensive livestock grazing) are compatible with primary objectives of biodiversity and water the delivery of all these services. quality, compared to its predecessor. The interactions between flood risk management A result of the recent severe flood events has and the other services are complex. The been better local dialogue between stakeholders maintenance and operation of flood defence and the search for consensus and a common structures tends to operate independently of the vision for future land and water management. other services but it is when these are The ecosystems approach has played a part in overwhelmed by flooding that interactions this process since it provides an objective way of become evident. Shallow and short term establishing and debating the values that the flooding is broadly compatible with other area provides. services but long term and deep storage of flood Although the focus of most of the work, water causes conflicts, particularly with food particularly that using public funding from production and biodiversity. However, the central and local government, has been on flood generally unavoidable nature of severe flood defence and flood risk management, the way in events means that the opportunities to plan for which this has been done has meant that the win-win trade-offs where such conflict is value of the ecosystem services provided by the minimised, are limited area is better understood and taken into Economic valuation techniques can play a account. It is significant that much of the valuable role in helping stakeholders prioritise additional funding recently acquired by the the benefits provided by different ecosystem Somerset Levels Development Fund is being services. Despite the well-recognised used to enhance these values. Initiatives such methodology for valuing ecosystem services, as the exploration of an Ecological Enterprise generating a set of values for the selected Zone, a pilot Payment for Ecosystem Services services that would give a sound basis for scheme and conducting research into the dialogue or decision making in the project area creation of a Community Land Trust represent would be very difficult, particularly for the two novel and innovative approaches that take a cultural services of biodiversity and sense of more integrated and ecosystem service-centred history. However, thinking about how services approach than has been taken previously. are valued does produce useful analysis of who Lessons to and from other areas: Increasing gains and losses from their provision and how flood risk is a significant threat to many other financial measures could be designed to transfer low-lying coastal areas of England. There are value from the beneficiaries to the providers. strong similarities to the Somerset Levels where Drivers of change: Looking to the future, each these areas contain wetland habitats of high of the selected services has a number of drivers environmental value. Expertise gained on the of change acting on them that will, individually Somerset Levels in water level management to or in combination, result in increases and balance flood risk with environmental objectives declines in their delivery. The most significant can be shared with other areas. In the other driver of change that will effect land and water direction, techniques for mapping ecosystem management and the condition
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