It is well-known that meadows (hay meadows) are now a vanishingly small part of the British landscape. For instance in Nottinghamshire we have around 28 ha of MG4 grassland (the typical meadow plant community for meadows in the East Midlands).
Work <https://theintermingledpot.wordpress.com/2017/06/27/we-should-talk-of-ancient-grassland/> by my friend Martin Allen indicates that Natural England's figures for the main meadow types are hopelessly optimistic, and there is no money to actually develop good quality data on what exists. Many, but not all, surviving meadows (unimproved grasslands which have not been ploughed) will have some degree of protection: SSSI or nomination as a Local Wildlife Site (although the latter is not much). The key book on the subject is Peterken's Meadows <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/meadows-9780956490247/> in the series published by Bloomsbury (formerly British Wildlife Publishing). Similar issues exist in other parts of the UK, John Falkner, former head of the NIEA, jokes that Perennial Rye-grass, not Flax, is now Northern Irelands national plant. Undisturbed grasslands are now often limited to coastal zones. The loss of meadows since WWII means that many of us are not very familiar with them. Loose usage of the term meadow, for instance in 'wildflower meadow', or, for any patch of grassland, or, even, on OSM, means that meadow is probably no longer a terribly useful term. The phrases used in the ecological literature are "unimproved grassland" (acidic, neutral or basic) and Martin's suggestion "ancient grassland". Typical modern pasturage will be leys (typically Perennial Rye-grass re-sown periodically), and fertilised and thus improved grassland. In practice they are easy to tell apart on the ground: unimproved grassland will obviously have many species of grasses & forbs (non-grass herbs aka weeds), whereas improved grassland is often apparently a monoculture with very few weed species (and these will be different from those in unimproved grassland). Improved grassland is often a rather lurid green colour. The half-way house - semi-improved grassland - is rather harder to find simple rules of thumb. I strongly believe we should try & map REAL meadows: they are a precious and diminishing resource. Jerry Either way, as Ian points out on crop rotation, mapping things as landuse=meadow from aerial imagery True meadows which used to be common in the UK On Fri, 24 May 2019 at 11:01, David Woolley <for...@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote: > On 24/05/2019 10:43, Gregory Marler wrote: > > to me, meadow is a different to the common farm fields that have animals > > in. A meadow is likely longer grass, or encouraged to get long. It might > > be for flowers/wildlife rather than animals. > > Meadows, in farms, in a land use context, are for producing hay. > Deliberately encouraging wild flowers and animals, would be a park type > usage, not a farm type usage. > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-GB mailing list > Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb >
_______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
