Presents detailed assessments of the state of the environment of England and Wales. The book brings together and analyzes information on the coastal environment from various points of view: resources, biodiversity, quality, ecological health and aesthetic quality.

A photographic guide to habitats, this lavishly illustrated book provides a comprehensive overview of the natural history and conservation landscape of Britain and Ireland. In essence a field guide, the book leads the reader through all the main habitat types, with information on their characteristics, extent, geographical variation, key species, cultural importance, origins and conservation. It aims to help visitors to the countryside recognize the habitats around them, understand how they have evolved and what makes them special, and imagine how they might change in the future.

The book explores the complex and shifting geographies of rural Wales in the twenty first century. It draws on a broad range of recent academic and policy research to provide the most comprehensive and critical account of the spaces, places and environments of rural Wales to date. The book highlights recent processes of change as well as important continuities with the past. It also indicates the ways in which the contemporary geographies of rural Wales are bound up with rather complex connections between society, culture, economy and environment. The book consists of 16 specially commissioned chapters written by human geographers and sociologists with considerable expertise in rural studies. It is structured around five main themes. The first is concerned with society and community and explores changing rural demographics, the cultural impacts of in-migration, alternative communities and community action in rural Wales. The second theme is economy and employment, with chapters on labour markets, the eco-economy, migrant workers and market towns. The focus of the third theme is farming and food and the changing agri-food agenda in Wales. Welfare and services constitutes the fourth theme of the book with attention given to poverty and community responses to service provision in rural areas. The final theme of the book is environment, which is explored through discussions of environmental sustainability and the post-productivist turn in forestry. The book uses these accounts of the social, economic and environmental geographies of rural Wales to provide a broader critique of rural geography and rural studies in the UK and other developed countries.

Synthesises important concepts, patterns and issues relating to avian habitat selection, drawing on examples from Europe, North America and Australia.

This book examines welsh perspectives on the search for sustainable law and policy solutions to modern environmental threats.

Wales offers complete coverage of this fascinating country, including sections on history, geography, wildlife, infrastructure and government, and culture. It also includes a detailed fact file, maps and charts, and a traceable flag.

Providing a detailed account of the law of nature conservation, this book reviews and discusses the way in which the law promotes the conservation of species of animal, bird, and plant, and how it protects natural habitats for protected species. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book sets nature conservation in its economic and scientific context. It explains how the law reconciles the public interest in promoting biodiversity and the conservation of species and habitats, on the one hand, and the private property rights of landowners and other resource appropriators on the other. The book offers an illuminating new interpretation of this area of environmental regulation using a resource allocation model of property rights to explain how legal and economic instruments for promoting nature conservation work in practice. The analysis covers all recent legislation and case law - including the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 and the 2012 National Planning Policy Framework. The book will serve as a critical guide to UK nature conservation law for those working in the system, and a valuable reference point on the UK's approach to the area for environmental lawyers and policy-makers overseas.

The conservation of marine benthic biodiversity is a recognised goal of a number of national and international programs such as the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). In order to attain this goal, information is needed about the distribution of life in the ocean so that spatial conservation measures such as marine protected areas (MPAs) can be designed to maximise protection within boundaries of acceptable dimensions. Ideally, a map would be produced that showed the distribution of benthic biodiversity to enable the efficient design of MPAs. The dilemma is that such maps do not exist for most areas and it is not possible at present to predict the spatial distribution of all marine life using the sparse biological information currently available. Knowledge of the geomorphology and biogeography of the seafloor has improved markedly over the past 10 years. Using multibeam sonar, the benthic ecology of submarine features such as fjords, sand banks, coral reefs, seamounts, canyons, mud volcanoes and spreading ridges has been revealed in unprecedented detail. This book provides a synthesis of seabed geomorphology and benthic habitats based on the most recent, up-to-date information. Introductory chapters explain the drivers that underpin the need for benthic habitat maps, including threats to ocean health, the habitat mapping approach based on principles of biogeography and benthic ecology and seabed (geomorphic) classification schemes. Case studies from around the world are then presented. They represent a range of seabed features where detailed bathymetric maps have been combined with seabed video and sampling to yield an integrated picture of the benthic communities that are associated with different types of benthic habitat. The final chapter examines critical knowledge gaps and future directions for benthic habitat mapping research. - Reviews and compares the different methodologies currently being used - Includes global case studies - Provides geological expertise into what has traditionally been a biological discipline