The uplands embrace all land lying above the upper reaches of enclosed farmland, amounting to around a third of the UK land surface. Much of this is dominated by dry and wet dwarf-shrub heaths and rough grassland, though there are considerable expanses of blanket bog and montane (alpine) habitat. This section deals with all open, upland terrestrial habitats, including juniper and montane willow scrub types (other woodland features, running and standing waters, and swamps, are treated in the Woodland, Freshwater and Lowland Wetlands guidance sections).

 

Given the challenge of monitoring the extent and condition of each of these features, we have endeavoured to streamline the number of habitats into 28 generic feature types (listed in Box 1). We have devised guidance for these which should be applicable to any notified feature encountered on designated sites. The 28 upland feature types embrace the great majority of the 91 National Vegetation Classification (NVC) vegetation types in the uplands (Rodwell 1991, 1992; Averis et al. 2003).