England-wide assessments are made of the condition of priority habitats as part of biodiversity reporting processes. In recent years Natural England has worked with partners to develop a more coherent assessment framework for priority freshwater habitats, based on levels of naturalness and natural habitat function across the freshwater habitat resource as a whole and its key sub-components.
Information from a range of different sources is drawn into a common spatial framework, assessing key components of naturalness/natural ecosystem function – physical, hydrological, chemical and biological. The framework uses a 5-class classification of naturalness that builds on and extends the assessment and reporting of ecological status. As well as high-level assessments of rivers, headwater streams, lakes and ponds, the framework is designed to provide assessments of individual detailed priority habitat types such as chalk rivers/streams and oligotrophic lakes.
This assessment framework has been built into Defra’s strategic outcome indicators for its 25-year environment plan, in the form of Indicator B6 (natural functions of water and wetland ecosystems). B6 extends the scope of the assessment framework to cover other water-related habitats: terrestrial wetlands, estuaries and coasts, drawing together all water-related ecosystems. The B6 indicator is soon to be published in interim form as part of Defra’s annual update of the indicator framework.
A detailed information pack on the assessment framework will be available on this site’s Document Store to support Defra’s publication of the headline B6 indicator. The published B6 indicator aims to provide a high-level summary of information, whilst the information pack aims to provide technical explanation of the data framework, associated data processing and analyses, and detailed outputs on individual habitat types. Reports on the progressive development of the assessment framework are also available on the Document Store.
The assessment framework is being used by Natural England in the development of strategic targets for restoring higher levels of natural function in the freshwater habitat resource, as part of broader work to define Favourable Conservation Status of a wide range of habitat types and species. These will be designed to harness the combined strength of biodiversity and water objectives.