Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 243250

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Biological Conservation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bioc

Vegetation burning for game management in the UK uplands is

increasing and overlaps spatially with soil carbon and protected areas
David J.T. Douglas a,, Graeme M. Buchanan a, Patrick Thompson b, Arjun Amar a,1,
Debbie A. Fielding c, Steve M. Redpath d, Jeremy D. Wilson a
a

RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, RSPB Scotland, 2 Lochside View, Edinburgh Park, Edinburgh EH12 4DH, UK
RSPB, 1 Sirius House, Amethyst Road, Newcastle Business Park, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE4 7YL, UK
The James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen AB15 8QH, UK
d
Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Zoology Building, Tillydrone Avenue, Aberdeen AB24 2TZ, UK
b
c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 12 March 2015
Received in revised form 28 May 2015
Accepted 9 June 2015
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Blanket bog
Calluna vulgaris
Designated site
Heather moorland
Peatland
Red grouse

a b s t r a c t
Burning for habitat management is globally widespread. Burning over carbon-rich soils is a global environmental
concern due to the potential contribution to climate change. In the UK, upland heath and blanket bog, so-called
'moorland', often overlies carbon-rich soils, and has internationally important conservation value, but is burned
as management for gamebird shooting and to a lesser extent for livestock grazing. There is little detailed information on the spatial extent or temporal trends in burning across the UK. This hinders formulation of policies for sustainable management, given that the practice is potentially detrimental for soil carbon storage, water quality and
habitat condition. Using remotely sensed data, we mapped burning for gamebird management across
c45000 km2 of the UK. Burning occurred across 8551 1-km squares, a third of the burned squares in Scotland
and England were on peat 0.5 m in depth, and the proportion of moorland burned within squares peaked at
peat depths of 12 m. Burning was detected within 55% of Special Areas of Conservation and 63% of Special Protection Areas that were assessed, and the proportion of moorland burned was signicantly higher inside sites
than on comparable squares outside protected areas. The annual numbers of burns increased from 2001 to
2011 irrespective of peat depth. The spatial overlap of burning with peat and protected areas and the increasing
number of burns require urgent attention, for the development of policies for sustainable management and reversal of damage to ecosystem services in the UK uplands.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Prescribed burning of natural and semi-natural vegetation is an
established management across the world. It can reduce wildre risk
(Boer et al., 2009), manage forest succession (Sah et al., 2006), enhance
grazing pasture (Augustine and Milchunas, 2009), manage game
(Kilburg et al., 2015) and deliver nature conservation by mimicking
natural re events to maintain desired habitat conditions (Williams
et al., 2012). However, across a range of systems, there is increasing
evidence of negative environmental impacts of burning, including soil
erosion (Cawson et al., 2012), alteration of soil processes including nutrient cycling and soil hydrology (Neary et al., 1999), water quality

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: david.douglas@rspb.org.uk (D.J.T. Douglas),
graeme.buchanan@rspb.org.uk (G.M. Buchanan), patrick.thompson@rspb.org.uk
(P. Thompson), arjun.amar@uct.ac.za (A. Amar), debbie.elding@hutton.ac.uk (D.A. Fielding),
s.redpath@abdn.ac.uk (S.M. Redpath), jeremy.wilson@rspb.org.uk (J.D. Wilson).
1
Present address: Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, DST/NRF Centre of
Excellence, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2015.06.014
0006-3207/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

(Battle and Gollday, 2003) air pollution (Tian et al., 2008) and habitat
condition and biodiversity impacts (Surez and Medina, 2001). These
impacts must in some cases be evaluated against purported benets
of burning, for example wildre risk reduction, with the benets and
disbenets debated (Altangerel and Kulla, 2013).
Burning in the UK uplands for game management is a case where
benets and disbenets need to be better understood (Grant et al.,
2012; Sotherton et al., 2009). This burning is widely practised above
the altitudinal limits of enclosed agriculture on upland heath and
blanket bog dominated by ling heather Calluna vulgaris, for the endemic
red grouse Lagopus lagopus scotica. On these moorlands, burning is
undertaken in small strips recommended up to 2 ha and in rotations
of 1025 years (Defra, 2007), to maintain a ne-scale mosaic of different
ages which provide nesting cover and food resources for red grouse.
Together with intensive predator control and use of medication to
reduce grouse parasites and disease, this management supports a globally
unique form of recreational shooting which depends on achieving high
post-breeding densities of red grouse (200 birds km2, Moorland
Association, 2006). The area of heather moorland managed principally
for grouse shooting has previously been imprecisely estimated at

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D.J.T. Douglas et al. / Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 243250

660017 000 km2 (Bunce and Barr, 1988; Grant et al., 2012; Hudson,
1992), representing 515% of the UK uplands, and about 2060% of
heather dominated moorland, although not all of this may be subject
to rotational burning (Ball et al., 1983; Brown and Bainbridge, 1995).
Grouse management is therefore a major land use in the UK, but
concerns have been raised about the environmental impacts of burning
practiced for grouse shooting (Bain et al, 2011; Glaves et al, 2013). Many
moorlands are underlain by blanket peat soils, of which the UK holds
1015% of the global resource (Dunn and Freeman, 2011; Lindsay
et al, 1988; Milne and Brown, 1997), storing 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon
(Bain et al, 2011) the largest terrestrial carbon reserve in the UK
(Grayson et al, 2012). There is particular concern about the effects
of burning over deep peat (usually dened as 0.5 m depth; Bain
et al., 2011) on peat hydrology, chemistry and physical properties.
Where blanket bog is damaged by burning, impacts include a
lowered water table, breakdown of the active peat-forming structure
and resulting long-term loss of the carbon store (Lindsay, 2010;
Brown et al., 2014).
Moorlands are also of high international conservation value for their
vegetation, invertebrate and bird communities (Pearce-Higgins et al.,
2009; Thompson et al., 1995) with large areas given legal protections
for nature conservation under the European Commission Habitats Directive (Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), European Commission,
2015a) and Birds Directive (Special Protection Areas (SPAs), European
Commission, 2015b). Burning alters vegetation composition and structure and, where re temperatures are high and rotation lengths are
short, it may be damaging to re-sensitive, peat-forming species such as
Sphagnum spp. mosses (Brown et al, 2014). These problems are cited as
a primary reason for poor condition of upland sites designated for their
conservation value, contributing to the reasons for unfavourable condition in 53% of the total area in England (Natural England, 2008) and on
87% of unfavourable upland bog features in Scotland (SNH, 2010).
Finally, upland areas provide N 70% of the UK's water supply (Watts
et al., 2001), however water colouration and the occurrence of particulate and dissolved organic carbon (POC and DOC) from peat soils in
upland areas are major factors affecting water quality, incurring high
nancial costs for treatment (Grayson et al., 2012). Growing evidence
links burning over peat to a range of impacts on water quality including
discolouration (White et al., 2007), lower pH and higher DOC content
(Brown et al., 2014; Clay et al., 2012). Furthermore, riverine invertebrate diversity may be lower within burned catchments (Brown et al.,
2013).
Before policies for sustainable resource management can be developed, there is a need for a detailed knowledge of the extent of burning
in the UK, and how this overlaps with areas of high concern (e.g. deep
peat and areas designated under EU conservation directives). Despite
the widespread use of burning for gamebird management in the UK,
and increasing evidence of its wider environmental impacts, objective
reporting of the spatial extent of moorland burning, and variation in
spatial and temporal patterns, is currently lacking except at coarse
(10-km square, Anderson et al., 2009) resolutions or in localised studies
(Amar et al., 2012; Hester and Sydes, 1992; Yallop et al., 2006). However, the characteristic pattern of strip burning is readily visible on high
resolution aerial and satellite images (Fig. A1), allowing ne-scale
repeatable mapping over large areas, whilst the heat generated by
active res is detectable by re monitoring satellites. We use these
data to map spatial and temporal patterns in strip burning across
three countries (Scotland, England and Wales) of the UK at a 1-km
resolution. We use high resolution aerial and satellite imagery (henceforth images or imagery) to assess the extent to which burning takes
place over deep peat soils and in protected areas designated for their
conservation value. From satellite-derived thermal anomaly data
we measure trends in the annual number of burns from 2001 to
2011 nationally, and in relation to peat depth.
For the conservation reasons above, we focus on strip burning for red
grouse in the UK, however we demonstrate the utility of combining

remotely sensed burning data with wide scale maps of environmental

correlates, which is widely applicable where land use is associated
with environmental impacts (Willis, 2015).
2. Methods
2.1. Mapping burning extent
Areas assessed were based on Anderson et al. (2009), who visually
estimated the extent of strip burning for red grouse management within
a single image of each of 2707 10-km British National Grid squares
(Ordnance Survey, 2014) covering the mainland UK (Scotland, England
and Wales). We selected all 10-km squares with burning present and 60
additional 10-km squares that Anderson et al. (2009) did not assess due
to cloud-obscured imagery. From the resulting 488 10-km squares, we
used a single image of each constituent 1-km British National Grid
from Getmapping (2011) (n = 46 239 squares, aerial photography) or
Google Earth (2011) (n = 863 images, satellite images); the latter
was obtained for a separate study (Newey et al., 2012). We excluded
squares with less than 5% land or inadequate imagery (cloud cover or
blurred), and assessed a total of 47102 images. For all Getmapping images, and most Google Earth images, the image year was known. For
some Google Earth images we had not recorded the exact year but
could assign images to one of two years; 2001, b0.1%, 2002, 0.1%,
2003, b0.1%, 2004, 7.3%; 2005, 27.5%; 2005 or 2006, 0.1%, 2005 or
2008, 0.1%, 2006, 11.0%; 2007, 47.0%; 2007 or 2008, b0.1; 2008, 6.7%;
2009, 0.2%; and 2010, b 0.1%.
Getmapping images were viewed in ArcGIS 9.3 (Esri, 2009).
Shapeles of 1-km squares to be viewed in Google Earth were rst
opened in MapWindowGIS (2011), converted to KML les using
the plug-in Shape2Earth before being opened in Google Earth. The
percentage of each square comprising moorland and the percentage of
the moorland with strip burning was visually assessed (Fig. A1).
Between-observer variation in image scoring was minimal (Appendix
A). Both measures were estimated to the nearest 5%, including an additional category of 1% for the area of moorland burned, to identify
squares with very limited burning where rounding to zero would
have incorrectly classied the square as no burning, but rounding to
5% would have over-represented burning extent. The percentage of
moorland multiplied by the percentage of moorland burned gave an
estimate of the percentage of the square burned. Using the colour tone
of vegetation types on images, moorland was dened as an unenclosed
habitat dominated by ericaceous dwarf shrubs (typically ling heather
but also bell heather Erica cinerea, cross-leaved heath Erica tetralix and
crowberry Empetrum nigrum). Our assessment of moorland area will
also include some areas of grassland and bracken Pteridium aquilinum
cover where these occur in mixes with dwarf shrub heath, but only
where dwarf shrub heath dominates. Burning of grass-dominated
moorland also occurs for grazing management, but generally comprises
larger burn patches, is less tightly rotational and is a much less signicant feature of upland landscapes nationally than strip burning for red
grouse (Yallop et al., 2006). Therefore, whilst some of this burning
may be included within the areas assessed, in general we ascribe burning within our study to that undertaken by gamekeepers for grouse
management. Mechanised cutting of moorland may occur as an alternative to burning, and may also be detectable on imagery. Whilst we were
unable to quantify the relative extent of cutting and burning, cutting can
only take place where machinery can be deployed (not on wet, steep or
rocky ground (Defra, 2007)), and we expect any cutting to comprise
only a very limited area relative to that burned.
Post-burning re-growth of ling heather typically occurs in four
stages over subsequent years, which are distinguishable on aerial
images (Yallop et al., 2006) from newly burned (stage 1) to degenerate
with no remaining visible burn scar (stage 4). Observers scoring images
independently conrmed that stages 13 were distinguishable from
surrounding unburned vegetation (consistent with Yallop et al., 2006)

D.J.T. Douglas et al. / Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 243250

and together constituted the estimate of burning extent in a 1-km

square. We therefore assume that all burning detectable in these images
was conducted within a maximum of c25 years of the image date
(Yallop et al., 2006), although post-burning regeneration rates vary
according to environmental factors including soil wetness (Yallop
et al., 2009).

245

should therefore be considered minima. Where SACs and SPAs overlapped these were treated as separate sites for clarity.
2.5. Analysis
All analyses were conducted in R 3.0.2 (R Core Team, 2013) unless
otherwise stated.

2.2. Trends in burning frequency

Temporal burning patterns were extracted from MODIS Thermal
Anomalies data (MODIS, 2013). Sensors on the Aqua and Terra satellites
detect ground surface temperatures twice daily, identifying events when
the re strength is sufcient to be detected relative to its background (to
account for variability of the surface temperature and reection by
sunlight). Daily MODIS data for Scotland, England and Wales were
downloaded in November 2013 for 20012011. After re-projection to
British National Grid (Ordnance Survey, 2014), thermal anomalies with
probability of 8 (Giglio, 2013) were dened as res, probably excluding
some res, but reducing false detection rates of non-re thermal anomalies. We included burns within the fully permissible annual period for
burning (1 October15 April in England and Scotland (Defra, 2007;
Scottish Government, 2011)) and 1 October31 March in Wales (Welsh
Assembly Government, 2008) and these data were summarised as the
annual number of burns per 1-km square. Thermal anomalies will only
be detected if they are sufciently hot when the satellite passes overhead.
Similarly, res will not be detected on cloudy days as the ground will be
obscured from the sensor. Consequently, an unknown proportion of
res remain undetected, and our data are considered a minimum value.
2.3. Environmental data
Mapped peat depth data, produced using a combination of measured and extrapolated peat depths, were available separately for the
whole of England and Scotland, but not Wales. We derived a value of
mean peat depth per 1-km square. The dataset for England (Natural
England, 2012) comprised 25 m raster data with a peat depth value
per pixel, derived from two data layers describing peat types above
and below 150 m elevation, explaining 28.4% and 37.8% of variations
in peat depth respectively (Penny Anderson Associated Ltd, 2013).
Data for Scotland were supplied by the James Hutton Institute, derived
from a 1:250 000 scale soil map, comprising polygons of a mean area
4.3 km2, each with a value of average peat depth, with overall 7.2%
error on peat depth estimates (Chapman et al., 2009). The proportional
area of each polygon within each 1-km square was calculated to
produce a weighted average of peat depth per square.
We classied squares into three categories of average peat depth; no
peat = 0 m (squares overlying non-peat soils), shallow peat of b0.5 m
or deep peat of 0.5 m (Bain et al., 2011) (Fig. A2). Mean altitude and
gradient per 1-km grid square were calculated using a digital terrain
model with a 50-m grid of points.
2.4. Burning in protected areas
Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) comprise high-quality conservation sites aiming to provide increased protection to a variety of wild
animals, plants and habitats (JNCC, 2014a), whilst Special Protection
Areas (SPAs) are considered to be of international importance for a
range of rare and vulnerable bird species and regularly occurring migratory species (JNCC, 2014b). Using GIS we identied all 1-km squares
assessed for burning lying wholly within one of these protected area
types; squares overlapping site boundaries were excluded as it was
not possible to easily dene how much of the moorland or burning lay
within the site boundary. Thus, of the sites within the area assessed
for burning, we achieved coverage of 40.1% (range 10.075.3% per
site) of the area of these SACs and 43.3% (range 10.165.4% per site) of
the area of these SPAs (Tables A2 and A3). The areas burned per site

2.5.1. Spatial correlation between burning and environmental correlates

Using the burning dataset from imagery, we examined the relationship between the percentage of moorland burned per 1-km square and
peat depth, across England and Scotland (with peat data for all squares),
removing squares with no moorland (yielding 32 905 squares). The
response variable was the percentage burning measure, rescaled to a
proportion and logit-transformed (thereby normalising it) after adding
0.01 to all values (Warton and Hui, 2011). The key continuous explanatory variable was peat depth, with additional covariates of altitude (m),
gradient (degrees), image year (averaged where an image was from
one of two possible years), easting and northing, all tted as linear
and quadratic terms to test for potential non-linear relationships.
The proportion of moorland burned per square might show spatial
autocorrelation, especially within individual estates subject to similar
management practices. Estate boundaries were unavailable so we
examined whether such autocorrelation occurs, and over what scale,
by rst tting a non-spatial GLM with response and explanatory variables as described above, normal errors and identity link. We examined
spatial autocorrelation in the residuals using Moran's I in SAS 9.4 (SAS,
2012), at increasing increments of 1-km lags between squares, to identify at what scale Moran's declined to 0.1, when spatial autocorrelation
effects in model residuals are unlikely to compromise inference (Ryan
et al., 2004; Kraan et al., 2009). This occurred at a 20-km lag and we
created a factor grouping squares within 20 20-km blocks along OS
grid lines. We tted this as a random factor, thereby assuming spatially
non-independent errors at a 20-km scale, in a Generalised Linear Mixed
Model (GLMM) with normal errors, identity link, and response variable
and explanatory variables as above.
2.5.2. Spatial overlap between burning and protected areas
Globally, protected areas are not randomly distributed with respect
to key environmental characteristics that might relate to their
effectiveness (Joppa and Pfaff, 2009). Therefore, before we tested
whether the percentage of moorland burned per 1-km square differed inside and outside protected sites, we controlled for potentially
confounding effects. Covariates potentially associated with the percentage area burned (peat depth, area of moorland, altitude, gradient, image
year, easting and northing) differed markedly inside and outside
protected areas (Table A1). We therefore selected squares inside and
outside protected areas in England and Scotland, with moorland present
and with similar distributions in the covariates, following an established
matching method (Andam et al., 2008). We used the matchit procedure
in the R package MatchIt, selecting squares for both SPAs and SACs, using
nearest-neighbour covariate matching and a caliper of 0.5 standard
deviations of each covariate (Andam et al., 2008). We compared the percentage of moorland burned per square within and outside SPAs and
SACs, respectively, using two-sample unpaired t-tests applied to
the matched samples of squares, where the response variable was
logit-transformed to normalise (Warton and Hui, 2011).
2.5.3. National trends in burning frequency and its environmental correlates
From the MODIS data, we extracted all 1-km squares assessed for
burning that contained moorland. We summed the total annual number
of burns across all squares from 2001 to 2011. These data showed
extremely high counts in 2003 and 2007; a generalised Extreme
Studentized Deviate test, for detecting one or more outliers (Rosner,
1983) revealed that these years were statistically signicant outliers.
MODIS cannot distinguish between wildres or prescribed burns, and

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D.J.T. Douglas et al. / Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 243250

with 2003 in particular having a high incidence of UK wildres, including

some spring res within the permissible burning period (McMorrow,
2011), 2003 and 2007 were removed. Whilst some wildres may be
included in the remaining years, by restricting our study to known areas
of red grouse management at the 10-km square scale, this risk is
minimised. We tested for a trend in the annual number of burns, tting
a Generalised Linear Model (GLM) with quasi-Poisson errors (accounting
for overdispersion where residual deviance/residual d.f. N 2 (Lindsey,
1999)) and log link, with total annual burns as the response variable
and year as a continuous explanatory variable. We conducted two further
tests by modifying this model, rst testing whether trends differed
between England, Scotland and Wales, using quasi-Poisson errors, tting
country as a three-level factor and testing a year country interaction.
Secondly, we tested whether trends in annual burns differed between
squares in the three peat depth categories, in a model using quasiPoisson errors, using all squares in England and Scotland, tting peat
depth as a three-level factor and testing a year peat depth interaction.
Trends inside and outside of protected areas were not analysed due to
very small numbers of burns recorded by MODIS in the matched samples
of squares (b 7 burn events annually, inside or outside, across all squares
per site type).
As the number of burns detected by MODIS could be inuenced by
cloud cover, we tested for a trend in the annual number of sunshine
hours, using publicly available data from four weather stations situated
10 km from areas assessed for burning, with complete sunshine data
from 2001 to 2011 (Met Ofce, 2014). We included data from months
overlapping with the permissible burning period (October to April
inclusive), summing total annual sunshine hours across stations and
tting this as the response variable in a GLM with quasi-Poisson errors,
log link and year as a continuous explanatory variable.

3. Results
3.1. Mapping burning extent
Strip burning was detected in 8551 1-km squares, with 5245 in
Scotland, 3139 in England and 167 in Wales (Fig. 1a). Within squares,
the percentage area of moorland burned varied from 1 to 95% (mean
across squares with burning 16.7 0.2%; England 19.0 0.3; Scotland
15.7 0.2%; Wales 5.9 0.6%).
3.2. Burning and peat depth
A third (33.5%) of burned 1-km squares (43.6% in England and 27.6%
in Scotland) were classied as overlying deep peat (Fig. 1b). Of the total
area burned, approximately 466 km2 (39%) occurred in squares classied as deep peat, c278 km2 (60% of burned area) in England and
c188 km2 (40% of burned area) in Scotland.
The percentage area of moorland burned within squares was correlated with peat depth, peaking at approximately 12 m peat depth
(Fig. 2a) and also increased with increasing area of moorland within a
square (Fig. 2b), peaking at 400600 m altitude (Fig. 2c) and peaking
in squares with a mean gradient about 10o (Fig. 2d).
3.3. Burning in protected areas
Burning was signicantly greater inside protected areas than in
matched areas that were not protected (Fig. 3), and burning was widespread across protected areas (Fig. 4). Burning was detected in 26 of 47
(55%) SACs assessed (Table A2), with the percentage of total site area
burned ranging from b0.1 to 11.5% per site. The North Pennine Moors

Fig. 1. (a) Extent of moorland burning within Scotland, England and Wales. Map shows the percentage area of moorland burned within 1-km grid squares, assessed from a single image per
square obtained from 2001 to 2010; (b) extent of moorland burning within 1-km squares classied as deep peat (averaging 0.5 m) in England and Scotland. Shown are only squares
overlying deep peat and with burning present.

D.J.T. Douglas et al. / Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 243250

247

Fig. 2. Fitted GLMM relationships between the percentage areas of moorland burned, assessed from images of 1-km grid squares, and environmental predictors. There were signicant
quadratic relationships between the area of moorland burned and peat depth (21 = 15.79, P b 0.001), moorland area (21 = 22.33, P b 0.001), altitude (21 = 469.25, P b 0.001), gradient
(21 = 61.90, P b 0.001) and image year (21 = 39.86, P b 0.001), and non-signicant relationships with easting (21 = 1.85, P = 0.174) and northing (21 = 3.30, P = 0.069).

SAC in the north of England was notable in having high relative and
absolute levels of burning, with the 118.2 km2 burned representing
51.7% of all assessed SAC burning (despite accounting for only 16.5% of
assessed SAC area).
Burning was detected in 20 of 32 (63%) SPAs assessed (Table A3),
with b 0.110.8% of site areas burned. The North Pennine Moors SPA
(overlapping partly with the North Pennine Moors SAC) had the largest
area burned, both as a percentage of site area and also total area burned,
with 158.4 km2 burned representing 59.5% of the total area of burning
detected within all SPAs assessed, but only 23.6% by total area.
3.4. National trends in burning frequency
The annual number of burns from 2001 to 2011 increased signicantly overall across Scotland, England and Wales at a rate of 11% per
year (0.106 0.042, 21 = 64.77, P = 0.011), with an accelerating
trend in more recent years (Fig. 5). This was unlikely to be related to
declining cloud cover and improved burn detection, as there was no signicant trend in sunshine hours over this period ( 0.012 0.011,
21 = 31.91, P = 0.285). There was no signicant difference in annual
burn trends between the three countries (22 = 0.77, P = 0.950). In
England and Scotland, where we had country-wide peat depth data,
there was a signicant overall increase in annual burn trends
(0.105 0.029, 21 = 62.64, P b 0.001) but the rate of increase did
not differ between squares overlying zero peat, shallow peat or deep
peat (21 = 0.75, P = 0.926).

Mean area of moorland burned (%)

10

0
Inside

Outside

Fig. 3. Area of moorland burning per 1-km square inside and outside of two categories of
protected areas, Special Areas of Conservation (SACs; black bars) and Special Protection
Areas (SPAs; grey bars). Analyses compared samples of squares inside and outside sites,
matched by underlying environmental and topographical covariates (SAC, n = 2095 inside and outside, SPA n = 2238 inside and outside). Differences in burning inside and outside sites; SACs, t4025 = 8.64, P b 0.001; and SPAs, t4370 = 8.85, P b 0.001).

4. Discussion
This study provides the rst ne-scale assessment of the extent,
trends and environmental correlates of burning for recreational shooting of red grouse in the UK uplands. Burning occurred across 8551 1km squares and based on typical vegetation regeneration rates we
assume that this burning took place within the last c25 years (Yallop
et al., 2006). This estimate of the extent of moorland burning is within
the range of previous estimates of the area under management for red
grouse of 660017 000 km2 (Bunce and Barr, 1988; Grant et al., 2012;
Hudson, 1992), albeit towards the lower end; this may be because
other activities such as predator control may extend beyond the area
burned and may be included in estimates of the total area under grouse
management.
The annual number of burning events has increased signicantly
from 2001 to 2011 at a rate of c11% per annum. These national trends
in burning are consistent with smaller scale studies such as in northern
England where Yallop et al. (2006) reported markedly increasing burn
events, with the percentage of the area newly burned (b4 years) doubling
from 15 to 30% between the 1970s and 2000, and declining repeat burning times to squares from 20 to 16 years. Our results suggest that increases in the annual number of burns are widespread across the
uplands of the mainland UK. These increases may be due to general intensication of management for red grouse; for example, the numbers of
gamekeepers in employment, and the potential number of shooting
days that could be sold, increased in northern England from 2001 to
2009 (Natural England, 2009).
Set against annual increases in burning, aerial and satellite imagery
used to estimate burning may rapidly require updating, or the true
extent of burning may be underestimated. In fact, our study is likely to
be a conservative estimate since N90% of data used to map burning
are derived from images pre-dating 2008, and therefore before much
of the recent large increase in the number of burns was detected.
This increase occurred irrespective of peat depth, so that burning is
now widespread over deep ( 0.5 m) peat in England and Scotland,
especially in England, where 44% of all squares with burning overlie
deep peat, and where 60% of the measured area of burning across
these two countries over deep peat occurred. This result is set in the
context of increasing global concern surrounding burning on carbonrich soils, and its impacts on carbon storage and emissions, where burning occurs across temperate-boreal and tropical peatlands (Goldammer,
2013; Hoscilo et al., 2011; Tansey et al., 2008).
A growing evidence base highlights negative impacts of burning on
deep peat for a range of ecosystem services including drinking water
quality (Glaves et al., 2013; White et al., 2007), for example through
elevated DOC contents (Clay et al., 2012; Holden et al., 2012). There is
also evidence of both negative (Garnett et al., 2000; Worrall et al,
2010) and positive (Clay et al., 2010) impacts of burning on carbon storage and further research is needed on the impacts on overall carbon

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Fig. 4. Percentage area of site burned within two categories of protected areas; (a) Special Areas of Conservation (SACs); and (b) Special Protection Areas (SPAs).

budgets. Much of this evidence has been obtained from studies at a

limited number of sites, but our study provides a broader picture of
where burning is practised over deep peat, notably northern England
and the central Highlands and far north of Scotland (Fig. 1b). The
impacts of burning on carbon budgets may not have previously been
accounted for in national emission statistics (UK Government, 2015).
The signicantly greater percentage area of burning inside protected
areas than matched areas outside these sites is set in the context of
increasing concern surrounding the condition of upland protected

120

Number of burns

100

80

60

40

20

0
2000

2002

2004

2006
Year

2008

2010

2012

Fig. 5. Trend in the annual number of moorland burns recorded in Scotland, England and
Wales, using MODIS satellite recording of thermal events. Plot shows raw data with tted
line from GLM.

areas. Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas

are designated for the conservation value of their habitats and
birds, however in the uplands many of these sites are failing to
reach standards of condition required as part of their designation
(Adaptation Sub-Committee, 2013). Inappropriate burning is a
major contributor to the poor (unfavourable) condition of blanket
bog in upland protected areas in England (Natural England, 2008)
and Scotland (SNH, 2010) and our results provide strong evidence
that a greater percentage of moorland is burned within these sites
than outside sites.
The UK government has agreed to effectively protect more than 17%
of its land by 2020 (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010). The
impact of burning within SPAs and SACs, together with the evidence
of an increase in burning, suggests that current moorland management
is not making a sufcient contribution to this target; indeed it may be
detracting from it. Our results highlight the high overlap of this intensive burning management with environmental concerns such as soil
carbon and protected areas. The semi-natural moorlands of the UK
uplands are of high international biodiversity conservation value
(Pearce-Higgins et al., 2009; Thompson et al., 1995) and store important
carbon resources (Bain et al., 2011). Whilst burning may in some
circumstances enhance plant species diversity (Harris et al, 2011) or
support carbon storage (Clay et al, 2010), a wide range of negative
environmental impacts of burning are now increasingly well documented (Brown et al., 2014). Policies to reverse these damaging effects, for
example over deep peat, must be implemented as a matter of urgency.
These should include management agreements between land managers
and statutory agencies to halt damaging burning practices, and tighter
enforcement of these agreements.
Detailed remote mapping of the extent of widespread land uses
such as burning has other uses. It could be used to improve our understanding of the impacts of burning on the distribution of species associated with these upland areas; game management, including burning, is

D.J.T. Douglas et al. / Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 243250

known to be associated with the distribution and abundance of upland

birds (e.g. Tharme et al., 2001; Douglas et al., 2014). National mapping
will allow for a greater study of these effects, updating previous coarse
resolution assessments of not just burning (Anderson et al., 2009) but
also the interaction between grouse management and bird distributions
(Gibbons et al., 1995).
Acknowledgements
We thank Maider Guiu, Trevor Smith, Tessa Cole, Jonathan Groom
and Emma Teuten for data collection and map production. We thank
Natural England (especially Matthew Shepherd) and James Hutton
Institute (especially Steve Chapman) for provision of peat depth data
and advice on interpretation. Data collection was funded by RSPB and
James Hutton Institute, the latter supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development through project HUNT (212160, FP7-ENV-2007-1).
Analyses were funded by RSPB.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.
doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2015.06.014.
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