designing nature reserves

• Habitat: the environment an organism lives in (abiotic factors)
• Threats to habitat: deforestation, urbanisation, agriculture, mining, pollution, transport
• Purpose of creating habitat: increase carrying capacity for specific organisms or communities
• Unintentional habitat creation: Brownfield/derelict sites - undisturbed, low nutrient
• Quarries - range of abiotic factors, nutrient poor, baseline for succession
• Roadsides - home to wildflowers
• SUDS - sustainable urban drainage, intercepts storm water
• Intentional habitat creation: Protection - law protecting a site (W+C act to designate areas as SSSIs)
• Ownership - private reserves
• Charities own land - RSPB, WWT, WT
• Government - NNR or LNR
• Target species requirements of reserves: Range - large or small to find food year round
• Fragmentation - habitat broken into bits e.g roads, railways and housing
• Island small populations and results in limited genetic diversity
• Limited food availability at certain times of the year - migration to winter or summer feeding grounds
• Biological corridors: Mitigate fragmentation
• Permits safe movement between key sites
• Prevents genetic isolation and access to feeding sites
• Examples: planting, engineered corridors, bat bridge, hedges,
• Habitat shape: Border in relation to shape - circular shape has the best core to border ration
• Abiotic habitat features: Light levels - plant species will be shade or light adapted,
• Temperature for basking lizards and insects
• Water for drinking, shelter and breeding
• Water depth - different ecological niches
• Hydrosere - succession of open water
• Ecological niches for many species
• Dissolved oxygen - turbulent water
• Water velocity
• Temperature - deep water = cold
• Shallow water = frozen but warm
• pH- soils have different plant communities due to pH
• Acid peatland
• Alkali chalk soils
• Mineral nutrients - fertilizers on farmland for vigorous plants
• Less vigorous plants need less nutrients
• Salinity - fresh, brackish or salt water