New Forest National Park and 20km surrounding Area Ecosystem Assessment – Final Report Report prepared by: Dr Katie Medcalf Dr Gemma Bell Environment Systems Ltd. 11 Cefn Llan Science Park Aberystwyth Ceredigion SY23 3AH Tel: +44 (0)1970 626688 http://www.envsys.co.uk Environment Systems Ltd. i New Forest National Park and 20km surrounding Area Ecosystem Assessment – Final Report Summary This document is the technical explanation of the outcome of the New Forest National Park and 20km surrounding area Ecosystem Assessment Project. For non-technical users a project summary is available. Ecosystem services can be simply described as the benefits people obtain from the environment; ranging from physical necessities such as clean air, water and food, to aesthetic, spiritual and cultural qualities of the land, which enhance our quality of life. New Forest National Park Authority commissioned this study to review the range of methods that have been used to date to map ecosystem services, and produce a suite of ecosystem service maps to assist delivery of the twin purposes of the National Park (To conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the Park, and to promote opportunities for understanding and enjoyment of its special qualities of the park by the public)in addition the park also has a responsibility to work in partnership with other organisations to seek to foster the economic and social well-being of the local communities within the National Park. It is summarised in the parks motto of ‘Protect- Enjoy-Prosper’. This report outlines how Environment Systems Ltd has produced a series of seven ecosystem service maps that show the value of the environment and natural resources in the region. These maps will be available as an evidence base to show which areas of land deliver vital services and should therefore be maintained and which can be enhanced to deliver better services. They will provide a valuable resource for informing the development and application of land use policy and land management practices in the New Forest National Park and 20km Surrounding Area. The work also aims to support partnership working both within the park and with the surrounding area. Pressure on our environment is increasing due to a growing population, a changing climate and an increasingly globalised economy. The ecosystem approach was introduced in the Environment White Paper in 2011; the approach advocates considering the impact of any land use decision, not only on the economics of an area and upon the society, but also on the environment. The environment is increasingly being recognised as supplying services that are sometimes ‘hidden’; for example the role an area of green space with large mature trees may be seen primarily in terms of townscape character and recreation function but it can also contribute to urban cooling in a city centre. The maps produced by the project show for each area of land the significance of the resource, from the role of the New Forest National Park and 20km Surrounding Area as a source of recreational activity to surrounding populations, through to the significant role of the chalk aquifer in water quality regulation. The study area included the land and sea surrounding the park, excluding the Isle of Wight. These maps highlight major direction of ecosystem flows from ‘hotspots’ of service provision within the Park and throughout the 20km surrounding area, to areas of high demand; chiefly the large-population centres along the south coast. The maps add a new dimension to existing evidence, showing the value of the green and blue spaces in relationship to factors that have been difficult to quantify in the past. The maps are developed using the SENCE methodology designed by Environment Systems. This uses existing data and scientific knowledge to build a ‘scientific rule-base’; Environment Systems Ltd. ii New Forest National Park and 20km surrounding Area Ecosystem Assessment – Final Report the rule base is a scoring system which looks at each characteristic of the land, assesses how it contributes to ecosystem services, and assigns a value of low, medium or high for each service (full details are provided in the glossary) For example an area of peaty soils with intact fen/bog vegetation would score high in terms of water retention as it has the capacity to store water and release it slowly. The maps have been created from existing data sets and are therefore appropriate for use at a strategic scale. For any action on an individual field or small plot of land, field survey information on soil, geology, habitats and hydrology would be needed to verify the information supplied in the maps. The maps were discussed and amended in a series of stakeholder workshops to build in expert local knowledge and data sets. The maps and this report are accompanied by GIS layers and an MS Excel spreadsheet, which gives a summary of the rules used. If new data or knowledge becomes available, or land-use change occurs then the models can be re-run to update the maps. The maps can act as a decision support tool outlining where the ecosystem services are currently being delivered and making sure that both the hidden and more visible functions of the land can be considered in land management decisions. For example in the stakeholder group some of the areas of the park showed high provision of multiple ecosystem services and this was seen as a valuable communication tool to express the worth of an area. The maps also can help respond to National Policy Drivers to support landscape scale partnerships, valuing natures (ecosystem) services, Biodiversity 2020 targets. They can provide evidence to underpin the development of the Green Infrastructure Strategy for the New Forest National Park and 20km Surrounding Area, which will in turn support Local Plan policies. This will be increasingly important in future years as decision-makers need to balance ecosystem service provision of the landscape with developmental and recreational requirements, and maximise resilience to climate change impacts. The maps will be useful as an evidence base to ensure a balance between economic expansion, increased housing provision, increased demand for tourism and maintaining internationally important habitat types and mosaics within the Park and the 20km surrounding area. They will help provide evidence to ensure that the qualities that make the National Park a unique and special place are strengthened and made more resilient, bringing benefits for people and wildlife. Environment Systems Ltd. iii New Forest National Park and 20km surrounding Area Ecosystem Assessment – Final Report Glossary1 Term Definition Ecosystem “A dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit” Ecosystem A process of communicating the causes of change in ecosystems and the corresponding assessment consequences for human well-being. Expressed so that decision-makers can understand the management and policy options. Ecosystem The interactions between living organisms and the physical environment that provide a function process, for example water regulation, nutrient cycling. Ecosystem The static characteristic of an ecosystem that is measured as a stock or volume of material or structure energy. Examples include standing crop, leaf area, % ground cover, species composition. Ecosystem A dynamic ecosystem characteristic measured as a rate, that is essential for the ecosystem to processes operate and develop, such as decomposition, production, nutrient cycling, and fluxes of nutrients and energy. Ecosystem The processes by which the environment produces resources utilised by humans directly service such as clean air, water, food or indirectly such as economic wealth. Ecosystem The direct and indirect outputs from ecosystems that have been turned into products or service experiences that are no longer functionally connected to the systems from which they were benefits derived. Benefits are things that can be valued either in monetary or social terms. Ecosystem All material and non-material outputs from ecosystems that have value for people goods Ecosystem A classification of ecosystem services defining the various types and subtypes of service (e.g. service Millennium Assessment (MA), the Common International Classification of Ecosystem typology Services (CICES), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)) Ecosystem Management choices that intentionally or otherwise change the type, magnitude and relative service trade- mix of services, such that the outputs of some of the ecosystem services are enhanced and offs others are diminished. Ecosystem The process whereby people express the importance or preference they have for the service service or benefits that ecosystems provide. valuation Ecosystem Modelling systems, which are logical or mathematical rules that are based on some analysis tools theoretical understanding that is used to represent the behaviour of an ecosystem so that its responses to changed inputs can be investigated. Such models are necessarily simplifications of reality. Environmental Where humans interact with each other and nature, giving rise to the cultural goods and setting benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. Geoinformatics The system of combining and analysing spatial datasets. Multi-functional Ecosystems that are capable of delivering more than one ecosystem service ecosystems Opportunity The process of identifying and mapping the potential