h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not sure this is the sort of thing you wanted.

'I climb Ditchling Beacon and walk along the ridge of the South Downs. After a while, I stop and look northwards. I see fields, woods, churches, houses and the buildings of the Agricultural College. And vineyards. It's the vineyards that make me think about continuity and change.
This isn't, of course, a natural landscape. These slopes would originally have been covered by deciduous woodland. Humans started clearing the forest a long time ago, and replacing the trees with pasture for sheep. Later, the demand for wool diminished, the sheep almost disappeared and the towns at the foot of the Downs grew. The sinuous line of the Downs remains.
Where next for the Downs and their landscapes? The towns will go on growing, but what about the vineyards? Are they proof of climate change – that it's now warm enough in Sussex to produce wine? A few vineyards aren't a bad thing – it's quite amusing to think of Sussex as England's answer to Champagne. However, they might be an outlier – an early symptom of more radical climate change.There are places along this coast which would be vulnerable to sea level rise, and the chalk of the Downs is porous and easily eroded. No landscape is eternal.'