Project Overview
“North Norfolk: Wilder, Wetter, Better for Nature” – is one of 22 landscape recovery projects in the first round of Defra-funded initiatives designed to restore key habitats along the North Norfolk coastline, such as grazing marsh, freshwater habitat and grassland-scrub mosaics, in conjunction with sustainable food production.
This ambitious project is a public-private partnership between Norfolk Rivers Trust, Norfolk Coast Partnership and Holkham Estate, supported by Natural England and the Environment Agency. The project aims to create new habitats for nature, restore rivers and boost biodiversity over an area of 5,000 hectares of coastal habitat within the Norfolk Coast National Landscape between Weybourne and Sheringham, including five key river channels. The longer-term objectives are to secure habitat connectivity across the landscape, to, improve water quality and increase climate change resilience.
The Challenge
Ecologists, Libby Pool and Jack Riggall, from Norfolk Rivers Trust and its consultancy arm, Rivers Ecology, are responsible for conducting the baseline surveys for the project. With 3,000 hectares to be surveyed from autumn 2024 to spring 2025 followed by habitat management and restoration plans to be delivered to 67 landowners, efficient data collection and management are crucial.
Solution
Norfolk Rivers Trust were already using Coreo on other projects and recognised that Coreo’s UKHab & BNG Platform would be the perfect solution for the Landscape recovery project thanks to the practical all-in-one platform which includes:
- Coreo’s UKHab survey app which allows for standardised data collection across diverse habitat types, ensuring consistency and comparability.
- Built-in condition assessments which streamline the process of evaluating habitat quality, enabling rapid assessment of thousands of hectares within a short timeframe.
- Direct export to the Defra metric calculation tool – which eliminates manual data entry, saving significant time and reducing the risk of errors.
“Coreo has been invaluable for this project. Having everything in one place, from survey planning to data analysis, has saved me an enormous amount of time. I can’t imagine going back to paper maps or separate platforms for data entry.”
Libby Pool, Ecologist, North Norfolk Rivers Trust | Rivers Ecology
Benefits of Coreo’s UKHab & BNG Platform
- Efficiency at Scale: Coreo enables the rapid collection of robust baseline data across the large hectarage and multiple sites. It provides a clear picture of existing habitats and their condition, with all project sites easily viewable and accessible on a single page.
- Streamlined Workflow: Coreo’s user-friendly interface and integrated tools significantly improves survey efficiency.
- Time Savings: Pre-survey polygon set-up and built-in condition assessment criteria significantly reduces fieldwork and data entry time. This has enabled Libby and Jack to survey nearly 2,000 hectares in a single year.
- Data Centralisation: Coreo’s integrated system eliminated the need to link spatial data from different software platforms, saving time and reducing errors.
- Collaboration: Coreo facilitates seamless data sharing between colleagues and other project partners ensuring efficient project oversight and communication.
- Landowner Engagement: Securing landowner buy-in is essential for long-term habitat management and achieving landscape-scale restoration – Coreo’s map sharing feature makes it easy to share visual data with the landowners.
Next Steps
Coreo’s UKHab & BNG Platform has a key role to play in enabling the North Norfolk Landscape Recovery team to carry out large scale baseline surveys which form an essential starting point for the project. Moving forward, the ease with which data can be analysed and shared from the platform will be equally important for the next stage of the project when habitat management and restoration plans will be drawn up. The plans will outline proposed interventions, costs, and anticipated biodiversity net gain benefits, paving the way for funding applications and landscape-scale improvements.
Find Out More
To find out more about the North Norfolk Landscape Recovery Project, watch Defra’s Landscape Recovery Spotlight video and to learn more about the first round of Landscape Recovery projects, visit Norfolk Coast Protected Landscape’s website.
If you would like to learn more about how Coreo and the UKHab & BNG Platform can support your nature restoration projects, explore our website or contact us today for a demo and free trial.