LE OXCAM, UK

CASE STUDY

Landscape Ecology

OxCam 

Project Type
Landscape Ecology
Client
Expressway Action Group
Location
Abingdon - Thame, Oxfordshire
Keywords
  • River Thame
  • Strategic transport corridor
  • European protected species
  • Strategic ecological scoping

Landscape ecological research and survey of rolling countryside in South Oxfordshire to inform biodiversity conditions along an OxCam road route option.

The countryside and villages that characterise the landscape between Oxford and Thame is very distinctive.  Rolling field mosaics are interspersed with woodland, hedgerows, occasional meadows whilst the River Thame and it's wide floodplain winds its way across the wide, shallow valley bottom.  

Lepus was instructed by local action group Expressway Action Group (EAG) to research and produce an inventory of biodiversity at the landscape scale approximately along a wide corridor of land which had been chosen to reflect a proposed road route for the OxCam corridor.

The Oxford to Cambridge Expressway, called OxCam for short, is a proposed grade-separated dual carriageway between the A34 near Oxford and the A14 near Cambridge, via (or near) Milton Keynes. The Highways England proposal aims to establish this route by linking existing roads and building new ones.

The strategic ecological survey of the corridor identified a wide range of biodiversity including protected species and habitats, information which was critical to the objective arguments being made by EAG about route selection.

Landscape ecology is the cornerstone of emerging UK ecology policy, to plan at the landscape scale. To find out more about landscape ecology, please visit our services page or click here.

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