Hard on the heels of the launch of the consultation on a land use framework for England, which we discussed here, is a press release this week about the use by Natural England of satellite images and machine learning AI to build a detailed map showing the current extent of habitats across the country. According to the release, “AI and satellite images are being used to predict how natural habitats are changing across the country, so more current data can be used to accelerate planning proposals and stop NIMBYism getting in the way of growth.”
Termed “Living England” this is a Defra funded multi-year project which delivers a broad habitat map for the whole of England, created using satellite imagery, field data records and other geospatial data in a machine learning framework. The Living England habitat map shows the extent and distribution of broad habitats across England aligned to the UKBAP classification, with the aim of providing insight into natural capital assets and helping to inform land management decisions. According to the release, it will be used to support the Defra Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) Programme and Environmental Land Management (ELM) Schemes and will provide an openly available national map of broad habitats across England.
For those unfamiliar with the terminology, the UKBAP refers to the UK Biodiversity Action Plan that was published in 1994 but has now been superseded and replaced by the The UK Biodiversity Framework. For the interested, more information is available here.
As well as having an enabling and decision making application, it is likely that the new tools will also have a compliance and regulatory role, particularly in the context of farmers and others being paid public money to deliver public goods such as habitat modification and creation at the scale envisaged by the prosed land use framework. That ties in with what we said here in August 2023.
