Habitat Feature Assessment of North Dartmoor SSSI

Descriptions

North Dartmoor, covering over 13,400ha, contains one of the largest areas of upland semi-natural habitat in southern Britain and is particularly important for western blanket bog and mixed valley mire communities. The requirement of this contract is to: 1) collect data on designated habitat features blanket bog and valley bog, wet heath, acid grassland and sub-alpine dwarf shrub heath across all units of North Dartmoor SSSI; 2) provide a supporting unit commentary to inform feature condition assessments for each unit; 3) record pressures affecting the SSSI features; and 4) capture vegetation data to assess winter grazing pressure. This data will give Natural England an understanding of designated habitat feature condition across the area of SSSI assessed, as well as an understanding of variation in condition within the SSSI and management pressures which may be influencing condition. The results will be used by Natural England to undertake a Common Standards (CSM) assessment of the condition of the features of the SSSI and an assessment of impacts of winter grazing.