BGS Hosted Metadata
Flora and fauna data from agricultural land under differing crop and management regimes, 2006-2010 - RELU Effects of scale in organic agriculture
This dataset consists of ecology data from 16 paired field sites; each pair consisting of an organic and conventional farm. A multiscale sampling design was employed to assess the impact of (i) location-within-field (field margin vs. edge vs. centre), (ii) crop type (arable cereal vs. permanent pasture), (iii) farm management (organic vs. conventional) and (iv) landscape-scale management (landscapes that contained low or high fractions of organic land) on a wide range of taxa. Studied taxa include birds, insect pollinators (hoverflies, bumblebees and solitary bees), epigeal arthropods, aphids and their natural enemies, earthworms and plants. The study is part of the NERC Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme. A move to organic farming can have significant effects on wildlife, soil and water quality, as well as changing the ways in which food is supplied, the economics of farm business and indeed the attitudes of farmers themselves. Two key questions were addressed in the SCALE project: what causes organic farms to be arranged in clusters at local, regional and national scales, rather than be spread more evenly throughout the landscape; and how do the ecological, hydrological, socio-economic and cultural impacts of organic farming vary due to neighbourhood effects at a variety of scales. The research was undertaken in 2006-2007 in two study sites: one in the English Midlands, and one in southern England. Both are sites in which organic farming has a 'strong' local presence, which we defined as 10 per cent or more organically managed land within a 10 km radius. Potential organic farms were identified through membership lists of organic farmers provided by two certification bodies (the Soil Association and the Organic Farmers and Growers). Most who were currently farming (i.e. their listing was not out of date) agreed to participate. Conventional farms were identified through telephone listings. Respondents' farms ranged in size from 40 to 3000 acres, with the majority farming between 100 and 1000 acres. Most were mixed crop-livestock farmers, with dairy most common in the southern site, and beef and/or sheep mixed with arable in the Midlands. In total, 48 farms were studied, of which 21 were organic farmers. No respondent had converted from organic to conventional production, whereas 17 had converted from conventional to organic farming. Twelve of the conventional farmers defined themselves as practicing low input agriculture. Farmer interview data from this study are available at the UK Data Archive under study number 6761. Soil data from agricultural land under differing crop and management regimes,are also available. Further documentation for this study may be found through the RELU Knowledge Portal and the project's ESRC funding award web page (see online resources).
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2012-09-21
- Citation identifier
- CEH:EIDC: / 1310549740505
- Citation identifier
- https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/010bcde5-e4f3-4b48-a2f4-53cdc9083c02
- Point of contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role University of Leeds Gabriel, D.
Owner University of Leeds Benton, T.
Owner University of Leeds Kunin, B.
Owner University of Sussex Stagl, S.
Principal investigator University of Leeds Sait, S.
Owner NERC Environmental Information Data Centre Publisher NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre Custodian UK Data Archive Van Den Eynden, V.
Point of contact
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
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GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
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Land Use
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- Access constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- unknown
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Spatial representation type
- Text, table
- Distance
- 1000 urn:ogc:def:uom:EPSG::9001
- Language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8
- Topic category
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- Biota
- Environment
- Farming
- Begin date
- 2007-03-04
- End date
- 2008-08-31
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- Unique resource identifier
- WGS 84
- Distribution format
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Name Version Microsoft Excel
12
Comma-separated values (CSV)
- Distributor contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
Distributor
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/data/010bcde5-e4f3-4b48-a2f4-53cdc9083c02 Download the data
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/sd/010bcde5-e4f3-4b48-a2f4-53cdc9083c02.zip Supporting document
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Other
-
dataset
Conformance result
- Title
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Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Statement
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Research funded by Economic and Social Research Council, Natural Environment Research Council and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Award Number: RES-227-25-0006 Botanical inventory and soil analyses on 42 selected case study farms with biodiverse grassland types: 12 lamb farms, 15 beef farms, 12 cheese farms, 3 control farms. Three grassland communities (mesotrophic, acid and calcareous) were so selected, represented by saltmarsh, moorland and heather for sheep farming; acid, calcareous and wet-neutral grasslands for beef farming; and circumneutral for on-farm cheese production. These were located using existing vegetation maps and surveys. For the botanical survey plant species were identified and their frequency recorded, as well as site and vegetation description, soil profile, soil depth, slope, aspect, stand area, sample area, mean height of layers of vegetation, altitude and geology. The data recorded on species cover and the calculated frequency class was then used to assign the assessed stand of vegetation to a published community or sub-community. For soil analyses 100 g soil samples were taken for each site to determine: ? sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium in soil by ICP-AES ? phosphate-phosphorus in soil by colorimetry ? pH in soil and water
Metadata
- File identifier
- 010bcde5-e4f3-4b48-a2f4-53cdc9083c02 XML
- Metadata language
- English
- Character set
- 8859 Part 1
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Hierarchy level name
-
dataset
- Date stamp
- 2025-04-07T13:24:16
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
-
2.3
- Metadata author
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre Point of contact
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