THE New Forest National Park Authority can now use aerial photography to map changes in the landscape, monitor coastal erosion and identify preservation order breaches more easily.

In rural areas of the Forest, conventional maps often fail to record the level of detail in the landscape which planners require to identify change.

It often leaves a white space where objects of interest may not be deemed important enough to annotate on a map.

Now with aerial photography from geospatial imagery company Getmapping, the park authority can access the whole of the New Forest park area down to 12.5cm pixel resolution.

Hedges, borders, paths and water courses can all be recorded and this can be compared with earlier aerial photography captured by the firm in 2000, making a powerful planning resource.

Data from 2000 and from 2005 will allow the Authority to monitor developments in the region and observe landscape change.

The identification by planning officers of even individual trees can allow them to respond to customer queries and track violations of preservation orders without having to leave the office.

GIS officer at the New Forest National Park Authority, Andrew Bell said: "We opted for Getmapping because it was the only company to provide us with high resolution Millenium and 2005 aerial photography of the forest.

"We can achieve much more using their photography than was possible when using conventional maps - it has saved us a lot of time, money and effort."

"With preservation orders, we now know exactly which trees customers are talking about without having to go out to visit the site and that enables us to make quicker decisions.

"We can also identify where trees are without entering people's properties.

"And all this information allows us to immediately identify enforcement breaches."