The area is predominantly agricultural, with particular abundance of arable land, and it presents shrub vegetation and agricultural areas integrated with natural areas.
Arable land, in particular, has become so profitable that its average price has soared from £4,000 an acre in January last year to £5,500 an acre today.
The finding that the surface water chemistry of streams and lakes could be partly predicted by regional-scale variables, in particular catchment land use (e.g., arable) agrees with the findings of several earlier studies (e.g., Schonter and Novotny 1993; Allan and others 1997).
For many European based studies investigating the spatial aspects of biomass production, the Corine land cover dataset (CLC) [38] is used as a base layer to identify the distribution of arable land used within a particular region [39].
In particular, forest removal was closely related to intensive arable production while a range of activities were correlated with "hobby" farm characteristics.
Microalgae have particular promise because they can be produced on non-arable land and utilize saline and wastewater streams.
The results confirm that the economic profitability of PV systems follows a north-south gradient, but the main impacts are related to local peculiarities – such as the disposal of not irrigated arable land and the presence of constraints, in particular the landscape maintenance, the morphological variables and the specialization index – and crop yields.
However, arable fields can also be viewed as a particular habitat harbouring a set of specialized species (i.e. arable weeds) adapted to frequent but also specific disturbances.
These strategies were also able to sharply reduce soil water erosion (⿿86%) and as a consequence P loss, in particular in the steep hilly and mountain areas, although their application to arable lands in those landscapes is still rare.
Particular problems are shown to be associated with utilization of animal manures on arable crops, and the move towards soil conservation practices, especially the use of cover crops.
