This report was commissioned by Dorset Environmental Records Centre (DERC). It is a sub-project that is part of a wider project brief provided by English Nature on the impacts of urban developments that are adjacent to some of the heathlands of Dorset as shown in Figure 1. The Urban Heaths LIFE Project is co-funded by the EU LIFE-nature fund and aims to combat the urban pressures on Natura 2000 heathlands in south east Dorset.
This projects purpose is to analyse and comment on two existing sets of data collected under the Urban Heaths Life Project (UHLP). These data sets comprise of a database of all the fire incidents that have been recorded by DERC from within the UHLP heathland sites and the results of a visitor survey questionnaire carried out on the same sites in 2003.