The Land Classification 2007 is a classification of Great Britain into a set of 45 environmental strata, termed land classes, to be used as a basis for ecological survey, originally developed by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE) in the late 1970s and building upon previous 1990 and 1998 versions. The strata were created from the multivariate analysis of 75 environmental variables, including climatic data, topographic data, human geographical features and geology data. The Land Classification can be used to stratify a wide range of ecological and biogeographical surveys to improve the efficiency of collection, analysis and presentation of information derived from a sample. The Land Classification 2007 provided stratification for the Countryside Survey of Great Britain 2007 and was adjusted from the 1998 version as a consequence of needing to provide National Estimates for habitats for Wales from Countryside Survey 2007 in addition to Scotland and GB as a whole. Both the 1990 version and the 1998 versions are also available.
Publication date: 2007-05-01
This dataset is part of the following
The 2007 version of the ITE Land Classification was developed from earlier classifications from 1990 and 1998 which used environmental data from all 240,000 km squares in GB to create the stratifications. It contains 45 classes or strata, distributed across Great Britain. Each stratum consists of areas with similar environmental characteristics. The classification differs from the 1998 version by splitting classes in England and creating additional classes in Wales. Further information is provided in the supporting documents available in the Online Resources.