Nature, Culture, and Conservation in the Anthropocene - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 150

Fig u re 7.4 (a) Distribution of the UK uplands (RSPB 2007). (b) Main forest types of Scotland c. 6,000
years ago (Tipping et al. 1999). Reproduced with permission from John Wiley & Sons. (c) Abandoned
shieling and wood-pasture (Holl and Smith 2007). Reproduced with permission from Elsevier.
Scenic Areas (RSPB 2007). Despite these efforts to protect the uplands, inappropriate grazing
and fire management practices, as well as nitrogen deposition and afforestation schemes,
have all contributed to a general pattern of declining biodiversity and agricultural productiv-
ity, associated with erosion of blanket peats and an increase in the spread of aggressive,
unpalatable grasses and bracken ( Pteridium aquilinum ) (Reed et al. 2009). At the same time,
changing agricultural policy is rendering upland farming uneconomic, and the social, eco-
nomic and ecological underpinning of these cultural landscape and is eroding (Holden et al.
2007, Davies 2008, 2011, Davies et al. 2008, Monbiot 2013).
The uplands are cultural landscapes that resulted from traditional pastoralist systems
that valued diverse mosaics of woodland and moorland, the two main components of
upland landscapes. Woodlands are generally mixed broadleaved, for example oak, alder
and hazel, with birch and pine forests common in northern Scotland (Figure 7.3b). Vegeta-
tion is determined by soils, former vegetation cover, and land management, the three main
moorland types being characterized by their dominance by heather and bilberry ( Calluna
vulgaris and Vaccinim myrtilis ), acid grasslands, dominated by, for example, Deschampsia