BIODIVERSITY MONITORING IN THE UK

UK Monitoring Challenge •  A small densely populated landscape

–  243,620 km2 254 people/km2

•  Land parcels are small – often a few hectares •  Land cover changes little

–  Proportion of urban is increasing

•  Land/water body management change is the most important driver of biodiversity change

•  Pollution and climate gradients quite strong •  Priority species and habitats (sites) scattered across the

landscape in many small patches, and a few large areas

Monitoring Ecosystems, Biomes and Habitats •  Land cover maps

•  1990, 2000, 2007 •  Derived from satellite data, and classified with other data sets e.g.

soil, and the national digital boundary data set. •  Habitats, vegetation, soils, water sample survey

–  600 1km squares, professional, 2007, 1998, 1990, 1984, 1978 –  ‘Countryside Survey’ –  http://www.countrysidesurvey.org.uk/

•  LTER - meteorology, biodiversity, soils, chemistry, experiments –  12 terrestrial, 45 freshwater –  ‘Environmental Change Network’ –  http://www.ecn.ac.uk/

Why monitor biomes-habitats in this way? •  Land cover stock and change drives the biggest decisions on priority

for policy (e.g. deforestation), whilst maps allow planning of effort. –  In the UK change is mostly in management that makes subtle change to

land cover –  It is hard to pick this up from satellite as change is at a fine spatial scale and

at small differences in classification –  We need something better!

•  Sampling vegetation to a stratified random design –  Attributes of plant species (e.g. response to nutrients, grazing) allow

changes in vegetation to be related to pollutants and management change –  It allows the UK to generate nationally representative statistics showing

whether these pressures are reducing or enhancing biodiversity. •  Detailed ecological monitoring and experiments

–  Are being use to relate the condition of habitats to their services e.g. carbon sequestration

Monitoring trends in selected species •  Breeding Birds

–  3,000 1km squares, 2,500 volunteers do the sampling, 3 times a year –  ‘Breeding Bird Survey’ –  http://www.bto.org/bbs/index.htm –  http://www.ebcc.info/pecbm.html

•  Butterflies –  1,000 transects, annual, many 100s volunteers do the sampling, 16 times a

year (and 2 times) –  ‘Butterfly Monitoring Scheme’ –  http://www.ukbms.org/

•  Collating presence data (distributions) –  120,000 species 50+ million observations from 1,000s of volunteers –  Trends possible for around 30,000 species –  The ‘Biological Records Centre’ and ‘National Biodiversity Network’ –  http://www.brc.ac.uk/ , http://data.nbn.org.uk/ , http://www.jncc.gov.uk/

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Why monitor these selected species? •  The species are selected to:

–  Be easy and cheap to sample allowing high sample numbers –  Have a good range of species within each sample location –  Ecology well-established so change can be interpreted.

•  The stratified random design for sample locations allows robust representative trends. –  The monitoring schemes provide trends that are compiled into the UK’s

biodiversity indicator set. •  Analysis can relate the trends to land management changes

–  The ability to show effects of production land management on trends has driven policy (for example the use of incentives)

•  The high sample numbers mean the data are easy to relate to other environmental data –  The data can be analysed with modelled climate and agricultural data sets

derived at different scales, –  This flexibility allows the monitoring to provide measures of the response of

biodiversity to climate change, links to many detailed policies e.g. wood fuel production.

Monitoring status of threatened species •  1150 species, highlighted as priorities for conservation

actions under the UK biodiversity action plan •  Many of these are outside protected sites and scattered

at a few locations •  Cannot be picked up by main sample based monitoring •  Most would need specific monitoring methods •  Too costly to monitor them all

–  Risk based monitoring is being trialled – monitor species where existing knowledge is weak and threats judged as high

–  NGOs have a big role –  Many are probably informally monitored by volunteers and local

staff, a goal is to make this information repeatable and available •  We believe our selected species and habitat monitoring

would pick up the widespread threats to these species.

Monitoring of protected sites •  UK sites

–  6,700 sites, 2.4 million hectares –  Many small sites – each a few hectares, few large – several square kilometres

•  Site condition monitoring –  http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-2201 –  A means of judging condition where the habitats and species vary across sites –  A means of comparing assessments made by different organisations at different

locations (e.g. by the different countries in the UK) •  How does it work?

–  Measurable attributes for the species and habitats important at the site are chosen

–  Attributes include population size, or habitat structure or composition –  Target values or ranges for the attributes are set which equal the desired

condition –  The fit of the monitoring results with the targets is used to judge condition

categories (favourable, unfavourable, destroyed) –  Guidance informs the choice of attributes for species and habitats in order to

have consistency but allowing local flexibility –  Threats and management measures also recorded

•  Initially applied across all sites over 6 years –  Now moving to a frequency based on risk – this means monitoring where the

combination of the level of knowledge is low and the level of threat is high

Summary of experience •  Current long term monitoring doesn’t address all the

questions •  Need to identify what it can tell us and identify the gaps •  Rebalance effort as needed (sampling strategy) – but

difficult •  Rarer species need a special approach – risk based