aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 English ISO/IEC 8859-1 (also known as Latin 1) dataset dataset NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre Lancaster Environment Centre, Library Avenue, Bailrigg Lancaster LA1 4AP UK info@eidc.ac.uk https://eidc.ac.uk/ EIDC website The Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC) is the UK's national data centre for terrestrial and freshwater sciences. information pointOfContact 2025-11-13T16:17:53 UK GEMINI 2.3 OSGB 1936 / British National Grid Farm management and vegetation plot data from paired organic and conventional farms in England, 2000-2004 2025-10-24 publication 2025-10-23 creation https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 10.5285/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 doi: Norton, L.R., Scott, R.J., Stuart, R.C., Firbank, L.G., Dodd, B.A., Wright, K.L., Wood, C.M. (2025). Farm management and vegetation plot data from paired organic and conventional farms in England, 2000-2004. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre 10.5285/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology gathered a range of ecological data between 2000 and 2004. The data include vegetation, farm management and habitat information, collected from 89 pairs of organic and non-organic fields on 161 farms containing arable crops distributed throughout England. Within these farms, landscape context and farm management practices centred on 30 pairs of target spring cereal fields (in 2000) and 59 pairs of target winter wheat fields (over two seasons 2002-2004). Data were derived at different scales ranging from field to landscape scale using a range of methods. The vegetation data consists of plant records from within target fields which were sampled in 3 years (2000, 2002, 2003) with each field sampled in one of the years. Three plot types were used. (i) Crop margin plots which recorded species presence in plots extending 1 m from the ploughed edge and 100 m along the field edge. (ii) Field boundary plots which recorded presence and abundance (% cover) of species in plots extending 1 m from the centre of the uncultivated field boundary and 10 m parallel to the boundary. Berries were counted in winter from a sub-set of sites. (iii) Percent cover of within-crop plants was recorded in 0.5×0.5 m quadrats placed at distances of 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 m from the ploughed margin on 12 transects per field. Farm management data were collected via land manager questionnaires. Farmers were asked 40 questions concerning management of the target field and the whole farm. Habitat data were summarised at the farm level from the satellite-derived UKCEH Land Cover Map 2000. Invertebrates and birds were also sampled but do not form part of this data set. The study was based on a total of 88 non-organic and 73 organic farms over three cropping seasons between 2000 and 2004. This dataset was created to investigate the benefits of organic farming for biodiversity as part of a DEFRA funded study. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 Wood, C.M. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk pointOfContact Norton, L.R. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1622-0281 ORCID record ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. information author Scott, R.J. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9349-0069 ORCID record ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. information author Stuart, R.C. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk author Firbank, L.G. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology L.Firbank@leeds.ac.uk author Dodd, B.A. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk author Wright, K.L. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk author Wood, C.M. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0394-2998 ORCID record ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. information author UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiries@ceh.ac.uk owner NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre info@eidc.ac.uk publisher NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre info@eidc.ac.uk custodian organic farming GEMET - Concepts, version 4.1.3 2019-01-28 creation Agriculture Environmental survey Biodiversity otherRestrictions no limitations otherRestrictions This resource is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence otherRestrictions If you reuse this data, you should cite: Norton, L.R., Scott, R.J., Stuart, R.C., Firbank, L.G., Dodd, B.A., Wright, K.L., Wood, C.M. (2025). Farm management and vegetation plot data from paired organic and conventional farms in England, 2000-2004. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 tin 1 English utf8 environment 2000-01-01 2004-12-31 -6.452 1.768 49.864 55.812 Comma-separated values (CSV) NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre info@eidc.ac.uk distributor https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/data/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4 Download the data Download a copy of this data download https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/sd/aa86a268-559c-4f54-8e52-6292ad7901f4.zip Supporting information Supporting information available to assist in re-use of this dataset information dataset dataset 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 2010-12-08 Data were collected from organic and non-organic farms. The selection procedure for study sites initially focused on the organic farms. Criteria for selecting organic farms were: (1) they should be at least 30 hectares, (2) highly fragmented holdings (i.e. where organic fields were interspersed with non-organic fields) were avoided, (3) agro-forestry and predominantly horticultural and grass enterprises were excluded, (4) they had to be growing the right crops in the right years. All data were collected on paper in the field by professional ecologists. They were then digitised later in the office and stored in a relational database.