WHAT IS LIVING UPLANDS?
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About us
The Living Uplands project was first created in 2015 to focus the attention on one of the UK’s most endangered birds, the iconic Black grouse. While developing educational resources on this species it became obvious that its story lies within a wider, richer, and massively diverse balance of nature and that there is a far bigger story to tell about the managed uplands of England. The project has expanded the range of topics we explore, informing and educating on subjects as wide ranging as the geology of upland areas, pollution, wildlife, and conservation activities, as well as learning on issues such as carbon capture and biodiversity net gain. Together, these aspects demonstrate how each has a profound impact on the balance of nature across the Living Uplands, as well as the management time, effort, passion, and investment required to sustain the landscape we know and love.
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In a Nutshell
UPLANDS
Uplands are any mountainous region or elevated mountainous areas. Generally speaking, upland refers to ranges of hills, typically up to 500-600m. Britain’s upland areas are some of the most beautiful in the world, with elevated areas of dramatic features such as hills, moors, valleys and mountains. Such landscapes gather more than 70% of our drinking water, store billions of tons of carbon in peat and soils and are home to some of the UK’s most rare but threatened wildlife and flora including 70% of the world’s heather moorland. Although they can look like a monoculture from a distance they host thousands of plants. Though sparsely populated they host more than 100 million day visits a year.
MOORLANDS
Moorland or moor is a type of habitat found in upland areas in temperate grasslands, savannas, shrub-lands and montane grasslands and shrub-lands biomes, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils. It generally refers to open upland landscapes dominated by heather and maintained through human management. It is found above the limit of enclosed agricultural land and below the theoretical climatic tree line at about 600m. The term moorland can be used to include blanket bog and upland acid grassland. Dwarf-shrub species such as heathers, bilberry, cowberry and crowberry characterise moorland, but there is variation according to climate, soils, drainage and management.
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Our Goals
Living Uplands is working towards a comprehensive online resource that shows just what makes the Upland landscape so special and important:
The geology beneath that helps to shape the land above.
The water, the hydrology, that brings life and shape to the landscape
The flora and vegetation that changes as the Uplands rise above the lower farmland.
The fauna that makes Uplands richly covered in special and distinct, and many endangered, species.
The ‘Life’ of the Uplands – the climate and weather, and the people and places that provide community and character to this corner of England.
Explore Our Wildlife
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