Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Land over 183 m (600 ft)
N
Teeside
Whitby
0
10
km
Goathland
Fen Bogs
May
Moss
Rosedale
Spaunton
Moor
Lastingham
Hutton-Le-Hole
Scarborough
Tabular Hi lls
Rievaulx
Pickering
Helmsley
Harome
Star Carr
Vale Of Pi ckeri ng
Byland
the presence of charcoal in peat. Once the tree canopy was
opened up, soil leaching favoured the spread of heath
vegetation, which in turn led to podzolisation. Increased
soil erosion is also indicated by
inwash stripes,
as at Fen
Bogs. So even before the arrival of
and cattle grazing, and also tree felling for charcoal in iron
smelting. Very few remnants of the original deciduous
forest survive, and even these have usually been so
intensively managed that their structure and species
composition is very different from the original wildwood.
Some regeneration of trees and shrubs occurred in the
Dark Ages, but another clearance phase in the medieval
period corresponded with a slightly warmer climate, and
exploitation of the Moors for sheep by monastic orders
at Whitby, Rosedale, Rievaulx and Byland. From the
mid nineteenth century onwards, moorland manage-
ment for grouse by regular burning led to today's almost
total dominance of heather and podzolic soils. These
heather moorlands are a rare and highly prized biological
community on a global scale, and their conservation has
been a major concern for both local conservation groups
(Yorkshire Naturalist Trust, YNT; North York Moors
agriculture the
vegetation was no longer natural.
The start of the Neolithic at Fen Bogs is marked by the
elm decline at 4720 years
BP
. The first arable farmers were
attracted to lighter calcareous soils on the Tabular Hills,
on the southern edge of the higher sandstone Moors,
where grazing causing the replacement of trees by heath
and grassland. Dimbleby (1962) has shown that further
podzolisation occurred in the late Bronze Age; fossil
brown soils preserved under Bronze Age earthworks
contrast with heath podzols in the surrounding landscape.
However, most human clearance appears to date from the
Iron Age and Romano-British periods, as a result of sheep
