#663: CORINE

The UK National Parks in 100 Seconds film I mentioned in a previous post uses CORINE data to work out land cover (not land use). 

This is useful data and is freely available. 

The earlier film on the UK in 100 Seconds showed just how little of the land was actually covered with housing.

Access the data here.

#565: 75 years of the Peak District

2026 marks the 75th anniversary of the first National Park to be designated in the UK.

Peak District National Park

A local National Park will be a perfect place for visits once the GCSE Natural History launches, and many schools will be within a reasonable distance of one... or actually within one.

#278: Yellowstone Trophic Cascade

This is one of the videos that has been shown many times as an example of rewilding and the impact on the wider ecosystem. I remember seeing it being shown at the RGS many years ago.

Yellowstone video on wolves.

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the United States after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable "trophic cascade" occurred. What is a trophic cascade and how exactly do wolves change rivers? George Monbiot explains.

 

#153: The UK in 100 Seconds

The UK in 100 seconds from Friends of the Earth on Vimeo.

The UK in 100 Seconds was conceived by Daniel Raven Ellison.

It’s difficult to get a picture of what the United Kingdom really looks like. Imaginations and assumptions can distort decisions that affect our lives. We often hear the idea that there is simply no more room in the country. In reality, just six per cent of the UK is built on.

‘The UK in 100 Seconds’ is a provocative and thought provoking film that rearranges the United Kingdom’s land into 32 categories and divides them over 100 seconds. Each second equates to 1% of what the country looks like from the air.

Made by guerrilla geographer Daniel Raven-Ellison and filmmaker Jack Smith, the film was made by travelling from Tongue in the north of Scotland to the New Forest in the south of England. Each second of the film covers roughly one metre of Raven-Ellison’s walk through moorland and peat bogs, down a runway and over a dump.

Made in collaboration with Friends of the Earth, the film gives an honest reflection of what land looks like and how it is used in the United Kingdom and raises some challenging questions. A major inspiration for Raven-Ellison making the film is the amount of space that is used for feeding livestock and the question – what if we made more space for nature?

More details on the film here.

The narration is by Benjamin Zephaniah.

A second film focussed on the UK's National Parks in 100 Seconds, with narration by Cerys Matthews.

And a third focussed on the Netherlands.

#30: Don't fence me in

I love this image by Harry Epworth Allen.

It shows the typical walls that are found in much of the Peak District - both the White and the Dark Peak. This looks like the area around Great and Little Hucklow, which I know well.

Derbyshire Walls, by Harry Epworth Allen (1894-1958), @SheffMuseums. pic.twitter.com/jLg8X2xFPy

— Brian Groom (@GroomB) December 20, 2022

These walls are made by skilful people, and were a massive achievement - the walls run to hundreds if not thousands of miles in length and enclosed land owned by landowners including monasteries / religious areas as well as individuals. 

This article in Great British Life explains how they are an integral part of the British countyside in this part of the country. 

Here's a little extract from the article.

The existence of dry stone walls can be dated as far back as over 3,500bc. 

It is believed that farmers of the Iron and Bronze Ages constructed their agricultural walls with the huge structures arranged by the ethnic chiefs and lords. In Derbyshire alone we have standing walls that go back to Roman times; ancient clearance walls built to mark boundaries and contain livestock; slavers walls built by people who were captured and brought here because they could build walls effectively; and famine walls built by Irish labourers in the 1800s, working either for homesteads or wealthy land owners.

At a glance, the ages and types of dry stone walls are identifiable by their shape, form and location. Enclosure by Act of Parliament was standard in the mid 1700s, although the first Enclosure Act was passed in 1604. 

Walls built in this period are the most common in the countryside, dividing land in straight strips of a rectangular shape and called the enclosures walls, as seen in the countryside near Monyash and Flagg.

The walls are also important for some plant and animal species by providing a sheltered habitat for them to grow.

The idea of borders is also important, and there are some possible contexts here for work around Natural History in terms of identifying just how enclosures in the past have influenced the natural history and biodiversity of today.