ITE land classification of Great Britain web map service
(ITE Merlewood Land Classification of Great Britain)

This service is a representation of the Land Classification of Great Britain. The Land Classification is a classification of sets of environmental strata (land classes) to be used as a basis for ecological survey. The classification was 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 has provided a stratification for successive ecological surveys (the Countryside Survey of Great Britain), the results of which have characterised the classes in terms of botanical, zoological and landscape features. Additionally, 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. There are three layers in this WMS (1) the 1990 version of the Land Classification which contains 32 classes - classifying all 240,000km squares in Great Britain (2) the 1998 version in which the Land Classification was adjusted to 40 classes as a consequence of the need to provide National Estimates for habitats in Scotland in addition to GB (3) the 2007 version in which the Land Classification was adjusted once again, to 45 classes, as a consequence of the need to provide Wales-only estimates in addition to those for Scotland and GB.