Environmental Monitoring Facilities
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This service provides a view of Environmental Change Network (ECN) site locations from which data are collected. There are 12 terrestrial sites and 45 freshwater sites. Sites range from upland to lowland, moor land to chalk grassland, small ponds and streams to large rivers and lakes. ECN is the UK's long-term environmental monitoring programme. A wide range of integrated physical, chemical and biological variables which drive and respond to environmental change are collated, quality controlled and made freely available for scientific research. The data form an important evidence base for UK environmental policy development. ECN is a multi-agency programme sponsored by a consortium of fourteen government departments and agencies. These organisations contribute to the programme through funding either site monitoring and/or network co-ordination activities. These organisations are: Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru - Natural Resources Wales, Defence Science & Technology Laboratory, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Llywodraeth Cymru - Welsh Government, Natural England, Natural Environment Research Council, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Government and Scottish Natural Heritage.
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These datasets contain sampled fuel moisture content data for vegetation, organic soil and leaf litter as part of the UK Fire Danger Rating System project funded by NERC (NE/T003553/1). The sampled vegetation comprises both live and dead heather, gorse, bracken, moor grass and moss. Where relevant, the canopy/leaves and stem were sampled separately. The datasets also contain associated information about the sample site characteristics (land cover class, elevation, slope and aspect) and meteorological variables (temperature, relative humidity and wind speed at the time of sampling). There are three datasets included which represent three separate studies: (i) UK-wide dataset which contains samples from sites across the UK from 2021-2023; (ii) North Yorkshire Moors dataset which contains samples from the North Yorkshire Moors, where sites were chosen to represent a combination of landscape characteristics, from five days in 2021; (iii) West Midlands dataset which contains samples from multiple volunteers on one day only across two sites. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/9334118f-3389-4a13-89a1-d75ec6fcc43a
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Chemical analysis of stream, river and rainfall samples for lowland rivers in the UK. The data are uncensored and provide a basis for research purposes, and must be viewed in this light. Information on analytical methodologies is available, including detection limits, from which the user can choose how the data might be interpreted. The basins studied were the Tweed, Wear, Humber, Great Ouse and Thames. One tributary (the Teviot) and two main-stem sites were monitored in the Tweed Catchment. One site around two-thirds down the catchment of the River Wear was monitored. Humber Basin Monitoring was undertaken for all the tributaries especially near their downstream limits. The Great Ouse was monitored around half way down the catchment. The Thames catchment was monitored upstream and downstream of sewage inputs to the river, prior and post effluent stripping of phosphorus. This work formed part of a major UK initiative introduced in the early 1990s, the Land Ocean Interaction Study, LOIS, to examine water, chemical and sediment fluxes from the eastern UK rivers to the North Sea. The entire LOIS core monitoring data, including a wider range of determinands, is available from EIDC. As part of this and subsequent work, the initiative was extended to examine a range of catchment basins, from rural to agricultural and industrial/urban impacted ones.
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This dataset contains ecosystem function and vegetation survey data from soils collected from Salisbury Plain, UK. The sites were selected to reflect the four main grassland management types on Salisbury Plain ranging from arable cropland to species rich grassland, with six representative grassland plots for each type (24 sites in total). Each site had four replicates for each variable measured. The data collected was intended to illustrate a gradient of ecosystem functioning and vegetation change as the grassland becomes more extensively managed. The field sampling was conducted by the University of Manchester and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology at Wallingford. Soils were extracted for nutrients and analysed by the University of Manchester. The data includes vegetation surveys, where the cover of each plant species present was assessed, and diversity indices were calculated. Furthermore, greenhouse gas fluxes were measured in situ, and soil nutrients and microbial biomass were also determined. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/0e0a89e1-21f9-413e-8d7e-764b0b714dd6
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A dataset of historical sediment Carbon and Nitrogen isotope measurements from lake cores (n=95) spanning the range of lake types and catchments found across the UK. These data have been obtained from the Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC) lake sediment core archive with well-resolved time intervals (1850, 1900, 1980 and present) determined by radiometric dating (210Pb; 137Cs). This data has been collated to investigate historical sources and accumulation of C and N in lakes. This dataset provides historical data for hydrological / nutrient modelling from the Long Term Large Scale (LTLS) Project in the NERC Macronutrients programme. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/4b53b1d7-f290-4b47-97e9-9f9ec79f3003
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This dataset comprises individual site indices for UK butterfly species calculated from data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS). Site indices are a relative rather than an absolute measure of the size of a population, and have been shown to relate closely to other, more intensive, measures of population size such as mark, release, recapture (MRR) methods. The site index can be thought of as a relative measure of the population size, being a more or less constant proportion of the number of butterflies present. The proportion seen is likely to vary according to species; some butterfly species are more conspicuous and thus more easily detected, whereas others are much less easy to see. Site indices are only calculated at sites with sufficient monitoring visits throughout the season, or for targeted reduced effort surveys (timed observations, larval web counts and egg counts) where counts are generally obtained as close to the peak of the flight period as possible and are subsequently adjusted for the time of year and size of the site (area of suitable habitat type for a given species). Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS) sites are thus excluded because they are based on very few visits from which indices of abundance are not calculated. For transect sites, a statistical model (a General Additive Model, 'GAM') is used to impute missing values and to calculate a site index. Each year most transect sites (over 90%) produce an index for at least one species and in recent years site indices have been calculated for over 2,000 sites across the UK. Site indices are subsequently collated to contribute to the overall 'Collated Index' for each species, which are relative measures of the abundance of each species across a geographical area, for example, across the whole UK or at country level for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Individual site indices are important in informing conservation management as not all sites show the same patterns for each species and likely reflect a combination of local climate and habitat management at the site. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is organized and funded by Butterfly Conservation (BC), the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). The UKBMS is indebted to all volunteers who contribute data to the scheme. This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme delivering National Capability. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/1286b858-34a7-4ff2-84a1-a55e48d63e86
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Data are presented of enzymatic activity of soil collected from paired intensive and extensive grassland systems including low and high pH parent soils, from 32 sites across the United Kingdom. The samples were collected during winter and spring 2015-2016 by project staff experienced in soil core collection. Dry soil samples were analysed for a suit of extracellular hydrolytic enzyme activities. Fluorescently labeled substrates were used to enable the activity of the following enzymes to be measured. All analysis was carried out at CEH Wallingford. The data were collected to help understand soil functional change in a variety of management and climatic scenarios as part of NERC U-GRASS (Understanding and enhancing soil ecosystem services and resilience in UK grass and croplands) award (NERC Reference NE/M017125/1) part of the NERC Soil Security Programme. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/15026591-f803-4b18-a359-cd69ea0e6069
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These databases contain collated trait data for 925 species of macro- and micro-moths recorded on the Landscape-scale Species monitoring of Agri-Environment Schemes (LandSpAES) project, on farmland in six regions of England (The Fens, High Weald, South Suffolk / North Essex, Warwickshire, Yorkshire Dales, Dartmoor) during 2017-2021. The traits collated include life cycle ecology and phenology, conservation status and relative abundance, host plant specificity and characteristics, adult feeding, pupal habitat, breeding habitat, and morphological characteristics. Broader categories, such as breeding habitat, are also split into sub-categories. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/8f9bb7c8-42b6-46f3-9718-84755810be7a
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This dataset contains bird and butterfly abundance data from field-surveyed transects at Hillesden, UK (2006-2017). Over this time period, Hillesden hosted two five-year experimental manipulations of agri-environmental habitats, alongside monitoring of their impacts on biodiversity and agronomic indicators. This dataset contains data suitable for analysis of ten-year interannual population trends across both 5-year phases of experimental work at Hillesden, and subsequent comparison with equivalent trends derived from equivalent national recording schemes (Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) for birds, Wider Countryside Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (WCBMS) for butterflies). The data thus relate only to transects which were recorded consistently (nine for birds, seven for butterflies), and to species that were present on the majority of transects. This dataset thus represents a subset from the whole Hillesden biological survey dataset for these two groups, and contains maximum annual counts per transect, across monthly visits (April-August) within the permitted time frame from equivalent national recording schemes (BBS for birds, WCBMS for butterflies). Data were collected as part of a project led by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, funded by Defra, with analytical work funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under research programme NE/N018125/1 ASSIST. ASSIST is an initiative jointly supported by NERC and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/c8d0ac67-6d47-42b1-af29-2339be8a5d82
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The following data set describes regional and temporal occurrence of plants foraged upon by managed honey bees (Apis mellifera). This data was derived from DNA meta-barcoding of pollen extracted from honey samples provided by bee keepers archived as part of the UK National Honey Monitoring Scheme (https://honey-monitoring.ac.uk/). All data provided is from the first full year of the scheme in 2019. Working in partnership with UK beekeepers, the National Honey Monitoring Scheme aims to use honeybees to monitor long-term changes in the condition and health of the UK countryside. Data associated with subsequent years will be made available as samples are processed. The Honey Monitoring Scheme is supported by national capability funding from UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology under the ASSIST programme. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/e9ec63be-3f2b-4d1b-b9bf-77ca2b96c7f5
NERC Data Catalogue Service