In your response please focus on the natural environment (rather than buildings), such as areas of the countryside, parks and gardens.

The interactive mapping page that you are looking at has been created as part of the Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area (NIA) project. The NIA project as a whole is a multi-partner collaborative project aiming to restore and connect nature across the landscape of Northamptonshire and Peterborough and is fully described elsewhere on this website.

The interactive mapping site has been created to collect information on the areas of the natural environment that people value, their reasons, and to encourage dialogue about these areas.

The natural environment provides a whole range of benefits for people, but traditionally these have not always been fully recognised and valued. In particular, the non-material benefits delivered by the natural environment, including things such as recreation opportunities, enjoyment of the landscape, health and wellbeing, have often been overlooked.

It is notoriously difficult to model these types of benefits, which are location and person specific. We are therefore attempting to collect this information using this web-based interactive mapping page. This simply involves asking members of the public to mark on the interactive map the locations that they particularly value and why, and to encourage public dialogue on these matters. On the website this will be displayed as a series of markers, showing valued locations, the reasons why, and photos and comments on these places.

We hope that people will mark numerous places that they value and engage in a dialogue about such places with other members of the public.

We will use the date collected to produce a series of maps that show the locations that are most valued in the Nene Valley. We will then be able to compare these to maps showing other important benefits provided by the natural environment, and to maps of biodiversity. This information can then be used to target conservation action and influence planning and policy across the area. We will also acquire a wealth of qualitative data on the valued places and cultural importance of the Nene Valley.

Funding and responsibilities

The overall Nene Valley NIA project is funded by Defra, with additional funding for this interactive mapping project provided by the Sciencewise initiative. The mapping project has been developed by the University of Northampton and the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, with website design and build by Kinetic Creative Ltd.

Contact Us

Please address any questions concerning the interactive mapping project to Dr Jim Rouquette at the University of Northampton (email: Jim.Rouquette[at]northampton.ac.uk).

Questions regarding the Nene Valley NIA project or the website as a whole should be addressed to the NIA Project Manager, Heather Ball, at Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust (Email: heather.ball[at]wildlifebcn.org).

The Small Print

• Participants –
  • Any member of the public can take part.
  • Participants can stop at any stage of the process.
  • There will be no incentives offered to take part.
  • All participants will be required to register.
• Confidentiality –
  • User names will be collected, but these do not need to be real names and there will be an option for these user names to remain completely anonymous on the public-facing part of the website.
  • Some basic participant information will be collected but will be stored securely and will not be revealed to the public or in any reports.
  • Email addresses will be used for login and password reminders only and will not be revealed publically.
• Data Handling and Storage –
  • The website and all data will be hosted securely using an industry leading web hoster.
  • Data will be downloaded intermittently by our contractors and sent to the University of Northampton, where it will be stored securely on University systems.
  • This data will not be shared with anyone not directly involved with the project.
• Content Moderation –
  • Potentially offensive comments and images will be automatically hidden from public view prior to moderation and then removed if considered inappropriate.
  • All content will be checked and potentially deleted.
  • Users will be required to agree to the website terms and conditions when registering, which will include a section on acceptable use.
• Approval –
  • This project has received ethical approval from the University of Northampton Research Ethics Committee.