Agricultural intensification of machair

Ploughing of the dry machair, in the Outer Hebrides, has long been a traditional practice, providing an important habitat of considerable nature conservation interest especially for plants (including rare agricultural weeds) and birds.

Caption: Traditionally cultivated machair in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Note the strips of ploughed land planted with potatoes in the mid-foreground.

In a few places management of the machair has changed from 'traditional' cultivation (small-scale planting of potatoes and oats on a cycle of several years using seaweed as a fertilizer and a period of fallow) to a more intensive rotation. This usually involves planting with cereal only, and using artificial fertilisers and herbicides as a means of boosting productivity. The overall effect of this is to reduce the vegetation diversity, to eliminate the period of fallow, when colourful machair grasslands develop. In some cases the adjacent species-rich wet grassland which are so much a feature of the machair plains of North and South Uist is also destroyed.