Glastir Monitoring & Evaluation Programme. First year annual report

The Welsh Government has commissioned a comprehensive new ecosystem monitoring and evaluation programme to monitor the effects of Glastir, its new land management scheme, and to monitor progress towards a range of international biodiversity and environmental targets. A random sample of 1 km squares stratified by landcover types will be used both to monitor change at a national level in the wider countryside and to provide a backdrop against which intervention measures are assessed using a second sample of 1 km squares located in areas eligible for enhanced payments for advanced interventions. Modelling in the first year has forecast change based on current understanding, whilst a rolling national monitoring programme based on an ecosystem approach will provide an evidence-base for on-going, adaptive development of the scheme by Welsh Government. To our knowledge, this will constitute the largest and most in-depth ecosystem monitoring and evaluation programme of any member state of the European Union

Annual estimates of occupancy for bryophytes, lichens and invertebrates in the UK, 1970–2015

Here, we determine annual estimates of occupancy and species trends for 5,293 UK bryophytes, lichens, and invertebrates, providing national scale information on UK biodiversity change for 31 taxonomic groups for the time period 1970 to 2015. The dataset was produced through the application of a Bayesian occupancy modelling framework to species occurrence records supplied by 29 national recording schemes or societies (n = 24,118,549 records). In the UK, annual measures of species status from fine scale data (e.g. 1 × 1 km) had previously been limited to a few taxa for which structured monitoring data are available, mainly birds, butterflies, bats and a subset of moth species. By using an occupancy modelling framework designed for use with relatively low recording intensity data, we have been able to estimate species trends and generate annual estimates of occupancy for taxa where annual trend estimates and status were previously limited or unknown at this scale. These data broaden our knowledge of UK biodiversity and can be used to investigate variation in and drivers of biodiversity change