Geography For Schools

Farmers and their farming practices over the past centuries are responsible for the creation of the wide range of lowland and upland landscapes that we see and value in Scotland today.

 

Landscape Types

The biodiversity value of Scotland's farming systems is generally closely related to the spatial and temporal diversity that they introduce into the agricultural landscape.

 

In a spatial context, they produce a patchwork of habitats - meadows, grass pastures, crops, fallows, woodland, hedgerows, natural pastures (including heath, moorland, saltmarsh, marshland, bog, wood-pasture) as well as more intensively managed land around settlements and farmsteads.

 

In a temporal context, not all land is managed in the same way at the same time; so neighbouring farms with essentially the same production systems may sow and harvest crops at different times. This produces a patchwork of the same crop at different stages of development. In a similar fashion, adjacent pasture under different ownership will be grazed in different ways (e.g., with different animals and at different livestock densities) and at different times of the year.

 

Such diversity provides much more favourable conditions for plants and animals to find areas with suitable conditions for the completion of their lifecycles.

 

Davy McCracken
Senior Agricultural Ecologist at SAC Ayr