The ponds of Cheshire, formerly comm onplace, are vanishing from the landscape. Representing once dom inant farming practices, they now have high ecological value and form a visual and social am enity. Proposals to develop com munity-based schemes for sustaining the remaining pond resource are an attempt to integrate the diverse m eanings and uses of this landscape feature and to sustain the resource. Fund ed in part by the European U nion, the Pond Life Project will address the conservation of ponds in the context of a working agricultural landscape.
1. Faced with the prospect of dealing with several hundred or even thousands of habitat sites, environmental managers in dense pond landscapes often have insufficient information.2. In addition, there is a need to treat pond habitats as a totality, in that the intervening terrestrial matrix is relevant to the distribution and persistence of certain species.3. Part of the terrestrial matrix is concerned with the spatial distribution of ponds and their connectedness', termed here`pondscape'.4. An initial approach to delineating`pondscape' is demonstrated. Such delineation enables environmental managers not only to conceptualize core areas of pond habitat, but also to trace changes in spatial extent and form, and to predict (and where necessary mitigate) changes arising from proposed development.5. Though the approach is in part an abstraction, it also provides the advantages of synoptic description, monitoring and planning evaluation.
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