Green and blue network
Ecological continuities in planning
The green and blue network maps ecological continuities (corridors and reservoirs) that planning documents must preserve.
Green and blue network
The green and blue network maps ecological continuities (corridors and reservoirs) that planning documents must preserve. ARKENOR analyses continuities at project and territory scale to inform design and secure authorisations.
Purpose
Habitats are not enough, connections between them matter.
A protected habitat surrounded by development slowly loses the species it holds, because populations that cannot exchange individuals decline. The green and blue network addresses that: it identifies reservoirs of biodiversity and the corridors linking them, and requires planning documents to preserve both.
For a project, this means the ecological question is not only what is on the site. A site of modest ecological value can carry a corridor whose interruption has effects well beyond its boundary, and that is assessed.
Application
It binds through planning documents, and through the project file.
Regional and local planning documents translate the network into mapped constraints, so the first check is documentary: what do the applicable documents say about this parcel. The second is field-based, because mapping at regional scale is coarse and a corridor's real position is established on the ground.
Maintaining permeability, hedgerows, unfenced margins, appropriate lighting, is typically a reduction measure, and restoring it can serve as an offset where it delivers a real gain.
Design
Permeability is built, not declared.
A corridor maintained on a plan and interrupted by a continuous fence, a kerb or a lighting scheme is not a corridor. Permeability depends on details that are decided late in design and easily lost in value engineering: gaps at ground level, unlit sections, hedgerow continuity across plot boundaries.
This is why connectivity commitments are among the measures a site ecologist verifies during works. The gap between the authorised drawing and the built result is where these measures are usually lost.
Going further
Related pages.
Ecological connectivity connects to these subjects.
- Avoid-reduce-offset sequence — permeability as a reduction measure
- Offsetting measures — restoring connectivity as a gain
- Regional and local planning — where the network becomes binding
- Natura 2000 incidence assessment — connectivity between designated sites
- Four-season surveys — establishing real corridor position
- Wetland delineation — wetlands as blue network elements
- TerraLink: mapping ecological continuities — our method for this
- Ecological expertise — the full set of procedures
- Site ecologist — verifying permeability on the ground
- Working with land developers — corridors across a masterplan
Discuss your project
Engineering, environmental advisory and independent certification under one group, with a strict separation of roles.
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