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1017 evolution of the_british_landscape
1. Evolution of the landscapes
of Great Britain
Lecturer: Julian Swindell
2. Great Britain: 10,000 BC
• The ice age was just ending
• The land was scraped clean
• All that existed was a rocky surface,
scored by torrents of glacial melt
water
• Sea levels rose and Great Britain
became an island
3. What came next?
• Temperatures rose, trees grew
• Wildwood, 10,000 – 5,000 BC
• Temperate rain forests covered
Britain
• Modern people arrived
• They started to farm…
4. The landscape as it was before people altered it
After Rackham 1997 p 34
5. The English landscape as it is now
• England’s landscape is
fragmented into a patchwork
of land cover and land use
types
• What we think of a
essentially a “natural”
landscape is almost entirely
the result of human activity
• Farming was the first big
change, then urbanisation
English Nature Natural Areas
6. What drives change in the landscape?
• The fundamental internal drivers of
the landscape change could be:
– Geology: The rocks that build the land
– Climate: The rain, the wind, the heat, the
cold
– Geomorphology: The shape of the land
– Ecology: life and all its interactions
• The major external driver is
human activity
7. Human influence: farming
• Most of humanity moved from a hunter gatherer
economy to an agricultural one in the stone age,
starting about 5,000 years ago, and continues…
• Hunter gatherers are believed to have lived in an
ecological relationship to the landscape and to
have had only small impacts on it. This idea is
challenged…
• Agriculture arose in four places, Mesopotamia,
China, Mesoamerica and Papua New Guinea
• Farmers intentionally alter the landscape to
increase its crop and animal production capacity.
• This leads to the rural landscape
9. Woodland
• Wildwood is woodland
completely untouched by
people, no clearance, no
removal of timber, no planting
of trees. There is none left
in GB
• Ancient woodland is land
which has been continuously
wooded for known history, but
it has all been affected by
human activity.
• Managed woodland will
have been cleared, coppiced,
pollarded, planted, grazed by
livestock. The vast majority of
British woodland is managed
plantation.
10. Wood pasture and park land
• Where woodland and
livestock are raised
together, the
predominant landscape
is wood pasture
• The traditional term
forest really refers to
wood pasture rather
than dense woodland
• Wood pasture can take
the form of
– Open woodland: New Forest
and Epping Forest
– Park land: primarily grazed
grassland with isolated
standard trees: almost any
English country house
11. Grassland
• Few areas of
“natural grassland”
in England
– Most grassland is
pasture or crop (called
a ley locally)
– Grassland is
Grazed
maintained by cutting
Cotswold
or browsing pastures and
(sometimes burning), common land
which produce different
Tropical guinea
plant communities and grass cut for
landscapes animal fodder,
Now being
considered as a
bio-mass fuel in
the UK
12. Moorland
• Wet and acid soil
• Moorland supports
heather but is
dominated by
sphagnum moss,
which holds water
and does not decay
when submerged
• Moors are a product
of rain. Plant
remains in wet soil
do not rot but build
up into peat. Great
areas of the north of
GB and Ireland are
covered in Blanket
bog, unbroken miles
of peat moor.
13. Heath
• Heath: cleared, non-
acidic, dry land
which develops a
heather/bracken
plant community
– Will be invaded by trees
– Often maintained by
burning
– Very threatened
landscape
These photographs show
heathland around Poole Harbour
in Dorset, which has to be
actively maintained by tree
clearance and controlled burning
to prevent it reverting to forest
14. Wetland
East Anglia
• Waterlogged land
• Highly variable in
extent and location
• Critically affected by
water level Vietnam
• Crucial to flood
control and coastal
protection
• Probably the richest
habitat in temperate India
climates
• Can provide the
richest farmland in
the country…
15. Rivers
• Amongst the oldest features
of the landscape, a product
of a landscape’s internal
drivers, geology, climate and
geomorphology
• Nearly all cities and towns
were sited on rivers for water
and transport
Fraser, Canada
Mekong, Vietnam Ardeche, France
16. The farming landscape
• Permanent crops:
trees, vines
• Annual crops:
grains, tubers
• Livestock: grazing
and fodder
17. Landscape with buildings: the beginning of urbanism
• Buildings have
always been in the
countryside
• When they come
together, they create
a new landscape
18. Growth of villages and towns
• When buildings come
together, they are
more than just a
group of buildings
• The spaces between
become just as
important as the
buildings themselves
• They become villages
and towns
19. Cities; the ultimate human landscape?
• Eventually, towns
becomes cities,
entirely artificial
landscapes, built
by people
• In 2007 it was
estimated that
over 50% of the
World’s population
lives in cities, the
first time in
history
20. Urban landscape ~ ”townscape”
• Cities consist of buildings and the
spaces between them
• Their interaction creates “townscape”
• Architectural design considers
• Architectural style
• Scale
• Materials
• Street furniture
• Interaction between building and context
• Cities also require systems to provide
resources which are delivered from the
rural landscape
– Food, water, energy …
21. Urban design: management of landuse
• Town and country planning acts
– Development control
– Aims to conserve a finite resource: land
• Conservation movements
– Importance of history
– Cherished landscapes
22. The final edge to the landscape, the Sea
English
Channel
• Defines the shape
of maritime
countries
• Erodes cliffs,
deposits sand banks
• Controls
temperature
• Provides the rain
• Used as a sink for
all of humanity’s
waste Indian
Ocean
23. And finally
• Sustainable landscapes
– The conservation of the landscape in the present
so that it may be enjoyed in the future
• Sustainability is at the core of
everything you will study at the RAC
• "..development that meets the
needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own
needs" Brundtland report 1987 “Our
Common Future”
