Landscape

The Yorkshire Dales National Park has a sense of place that is unique. Its special qualities result from a combination of nature and culture, the beauty of the landscape, and the way it has been shaped by people over time. It also includes the more intangible qualities appreciated by residents and visitors, such as peace, solitude, space, inspiration and the escape the National Park offers from urban living.

The character of a landscape is created by the combination of its patterns of geology, landform, soils and vegetation, land use, field patterns and human settlement.  At the broad scale, landscape character makes each part of Britain distinctive and gives each its sense of place.  At the local scale, there may be distinct differences in landscape character between different parts of a single valley or dale.

At the broad scale, England has been divided into 159 areas with similar landscape character.  These are called Joint Character Areas (JCAs).  The Yorkshire Dale National Park mostly falls in the Yorkshire Dales JCA but is also covered in its western extreme by the Howgill Fells JCA.

At the local scale, the Authority has published a comprehensive assessment of the landscape character of the Park (Landscape Character Assessment and Quality of Life Capital Assessment of the Yorkshire Dales National Park).  The report identifies 40 distinct ‘landscape character areas’, of which 34 are on a dale-by-dale basis.  The remaining six are separately identified upland character areas.  

The descriptions of the landscape character of each of the 40 areas are available using the links below:

Dales Character Areas

• Swaledale and Arkengarthdale
• Cumbrian Dales
• Wensleydale
• Craven Dales
• Malhamdale and south west fringe
• Wharfedale and Littondale

Upland Character Areas

• Southern Howgill Fells
• Yorkshire Moors and Fells

Further work is currently being undertaken under the auspices of the National Park Management Plan Steering Group to develop guidelines to further assist positive landscape change.

The landscape character assessment, in combination with a range of other documents, is used to help inform decisions relating to planning policy, individual planning applications, targeting of environmental grants and so on.