The impact of landscape and adjacent land cover upon linear boundary features

The condition of over 200 km of traditional drystone walls wassurveyed within 115 km² in lowland, marginal upland and uplandlandscapes in northern England. The land covers adjacent to wallswere also recorded. Of the total length of walls surveyed, 12.6%were in disrepair. The condition of the walls differed betweenlandscapes and was also related to the type of vegetation in theadjacent enclosure. Walls enclosing conifer plantations andunimproved rough grazing were in poor condition reflectinghistorical and recent changes in their roles as livestock barriersand markers of ownership. The effect of other land covers on thecondition of walls was not consistent between landscapes. Usingdrystone walls as a simple model system suggests that the conditionof linear features in general may often be determined by both theadjacent land cover and the landscape in which the features occur.