The UK has a long tradition of watching its natural environment, and some of the most intensive ecological monitoring and deepest expertise anywhere in the world. But our monitoring grew up piece by piece over decades, across government bodies, charities, land managers and grass-roots recorders, and the result is that nobody knows how much ecological monitoring data is collected across the UK, or how much of it is shared and reusable.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is working with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology to find out who is monitoring, what they collect and where the data goes. The findings will shape practical guidance for making monitoring data easier to share and reuse, and feed into the Building Better Evidence for Nature community and the UK Biodiversity Observation Network, with the aim of linking local monitoring into a national picture of the state of nature.
If your organisation runs repeated monitoring, your input would be invaluable. It covers terrestrial and freshwater monitoring that is repeated over time, at any scale, from a single plot to a national recording scheme. That includes monitoring at fixed sites, and recording that varies by exact location, as long as it keeps going year to year. One-off surveys, baseline assessments, short-term experiments and marine monitoring are not in scope for this round.
The survey is aimed at whoever decides how your data are shared, and takes about 15 minutes.
Two things are worth having to hand: the names of any repositories or data centres your data goes to, and a link or file with your site locations if you monitor at fixed sites. Neither is essential, and you can save your progress and return at any point.
The survey closes on 31 October.