Baseline Habitats for Natural Capital: Brightwater 2024

Our Futurenauts mapped 11,646 habitat polygons across 483 km² of the Brightwater landscape, creating the comprehensive ecological baseline Durham Wildlife Trust needed.

Combined with the archaeological mapping from our 2021 mission, the Brightwater partnership now has one of the most integrated heritage-ecology datasets of any landscape in the region, with archaeology and ecology recorded together across the same ground.

There was less survey data available to compare our results with for this mission, as only two grids had Living England ground survey data available for comparison. What we can say is that initial results are promising, and the full dataset gives Durham Wildlife Trust the ecological baseline they needed. It also shows that citizen-generated habitat data can hold up well even in complex, mixed landscapes that include urban areas, which isn’t always a given.

68% of participants reported stronger bonds with the mission areas after taking part. For those who were already local to County Durham, that often meant seeing a familiar landscape differently, and learning to understanding the ecology on their doorstep in a way they hadn’t before. 

The habitat mapping data was shared with Durham Wildlife Trust and the Brightwater Landscape Partnership, sitting alongside the archaeological data from our 2021 mission to give the partnership one of the most complete pictures of any landscape in the region.

The two datasets inform nature recovery planning across lowland County Durham, detailing not just what the land looks like now, but what it’s looked like across centuries.