ITE Land Classification of Great Britain 1990
(ITE Merlewood Land Classification of Great Britain 1990)

The Land Classification 1990 is a classification of Great Britain into a set of 32 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. 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 1990 provided stratification the Countryside Survey of Great Britain 1990. The dataset was later modified in 1998 and 2007 for successive Countryside Surveys, both versions of which are also available.