How the Surveillance Strategy can help you
The stategy is designed to be used by a
wide range of people, for example funders,
organisers, designers or reviewers of surveillance
schemes, participents in surveillance schemes, or policy maker
needing information on the impacts of a particular pressure on
biodiversity. Find out more on how the Surveillance Strategy
can help you.
JNCC - putting the strategy to use
The examples summarised below show how JNCC has
been using the strategy in analysing needs and evaluating
surveillance coverage. As work continues, more examples will
be added, but there is currently information on: impacts of
chemical pollution, air pollution and climate change, coverage of
UK BAP species and habitats, understanding the need for vegetation
surveillance, reviewing the coverage of mammal surveillance
and seabird surveillance.
Nitrogen impacts on vegetation
There are a number of broadscale vegetation surveillance
datasets in the UK, but many have not been fully analysed in
relation to nitrogen deposition from air pollution. In
response to a recommendation in the surveillance strategy, JNCC
funded a major analysis of broadscale vegetation datasets in order
to investigate the impact of nitrogen deposition.
The study clearly demonstrated
significant changes in the abundance of individual species and
variables describing habitat structure and function as a result of
N deposition. This, together with previous evidence from
surveys and experiments, provides clear evidence of species-level
impacts of N deposition in all four of the habitats
investigated.
The study is published in two
parts:
JNCC Report 447: focuses on the analytical
methods and the results
JNCC Report 449: takes the results of the new
analysis, together with other sources of independent evidence, and
interprets the findings in respect of implications for
“conservation commitments”.
Information is also available on a nitrogen impacts and
vegetation workshop held by JNCC in 2009 to
inform this study.
Designing ideal vegetation surveillance
The surveillance strategy identified a series of gaps in the
current suite of vegetation surveillance in the UK, including
context for more targeted sampling to monitor the effects of
conservation interventions, surveillance to provide an overview of
changes in habitat quality, and coverage of a wide range of
functional groups.
JNCC commissioned a research project to
investigate the optimal design parameters for plant surveillance in
the UK in order to provide future direction for filling these
gaps. The resulting report answers a number of
design questions, for example on selecting an optimal set of target
species, and deciding on where, how often, and how to sample
them.
Chemical pollution is a policy area that is
among the most advanced in our understanding of which surveillance
schemes can help provide evidence, and how that evidence should be
used in formulating advice. A paper describing a framework
for risk assessment of chemicals was produced as a December 2007 JNCC Committee
paper. The framework is still at an outline stage, but
sufficient detail is presented to indicate the linkage with
surveillance. In particular, Sections 2.7 - 2.10 describe the
linkage between surveillance, other evidence and advice; whilst
Section 5 explicitly addresses monitoring requirements to support
the framework.
JNCC has recently undertaken a more detailed
analysis of the data needs and current surveillance in place
for understanding air pollution and climate change impacts.
The resulting paper also considers the
potential role of the Environmental Change Biodiversity Network in
the light of this analysis.
A paper on Supporting UK BAP Species and
Habitat Reporting (see below) was produced for the November
2007 meeting of the Biodiversity Reporting and Information
Group. It demonstrates how a particular reporting obligation
can be analysed against the information in the Terrestrial Biodiversity Surveillance Strategy
Database. It also includes an analysis of
cost. The paper may be updated in the future to
reflect the way in which the UK BAP process has evolved since it
was written, and also to provide more information regarding how to
incorporate an assessment of risk into the timescale for
reporting. The paper works from an assumption that
all priority species and habitats will require information
from surveillance to assess their status, and some of these
information needs are already met.
Both of these analyses of policy areas have
been used to update the Surveillance Framework.
Reviewing taxonomic groups – filling gaps and evaluating
coverage
Plant and vegetation surveillance was
identified as an information gap in the Surveillance
Strategy. JNCC hosted a workshop of species and habitat
specialists to clarify the nature of the gap and to assess means to
fill it. Gap filling can be complex, since most schemes will
help to fulfil multiple objectives, and most data uses will require
information from multiple schemes. The Vegetation Workshop
Report (see below) identifies a number of tasks for taking forward
the work on plant and vegetation surveillance.
The Mammal Surveillance Review (see
below) used the three surveillance objectives to evaluate
current mammal surveillance schemes, and to identify any high
priority gaps in surveillance. The review work helped to
develop the three objectives at an early stage of the Strategy
work.
Eventually, further papers that analyse the
surveillance requirements of other policy areas and gaps in
surveillance will be produced, and these will be used to update the
strategy.