dataset · England
Living England Habitat Map (Phase 4)
The Living England project, led by Natural England, is a multi-year programme delivering a satellite-derived national habitat layer in support of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) System and the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) Pilot. The project uses a machine learning approach to image classification, developed under the Defra Living Maps project (SD1705 – Kilcoyne et al., 2017). The method first clusters homogeneous areas of habitat into segments, then assigns each segmen
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Licence: ["There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.", "There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the
Evidence quality: 57
Listed in data.gov.uk public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- habitat probability map (modelled broad habitat classes)
- Coverage docs-verified
- England · Training data from 2021 (with historic data layers); dataset reference date 2022-03-31
- Update frequency docs-verified
- Not planned (no scheduled updates); last updated 18 November 2025
- Formats docs-verified
- GeoJSON (zipped) · GeoPackage (zipped) · File Geodatabase (zipped) · OGC API - Features · ESRI REST Feature Server · ESRI REST Map Server · WMS · WFS · ArcGIS layer file (.lyr)
- Access docs-verified
- Free and open; Open Government Licence v3.0; no public access constraints (use subject to the licence)
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Desk-based habitat context for ecology constraints and BNG baseline screening on England sites · Habitat baseline for natural capital assessments and ELM-related land-use appraisal · Regional habitat mapping for planning and EIA scoping where field survey data is unavailable
- Audience llm-inferred
- ecologists · GIS analysts · environmental consultants · planners · natural capital assessors
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- Modelled probability map of broad habitat classes, not site-level field-verified data · Trained on 2021 earth observation and survey data; no updates planned · Methodology intended to be standardised in later phases, so future versions may differ · Attribution statement required for use
Evidence
- https://environment.data.gov.uk/api/file/download?fileDataSetId=1e6bc6dd-ee15-4bf4-b913-9ccfdf557646&fileName=Edition 1 NERR108 Living England Satellite based habitat classification- Technical User Guide.pdf
- https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/e207e1b3-72e2-4b6a-8aec-0c7b8bb9998c/living-england-habitat-map-phase-4
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.