Environmental Change Network

Beyond 2010: strategies for understanding and responding to long-term trends in UK biodiversity

Human health and well-being depends on biological diversity for the maintenance of many ‘ecosystem services’ that deliver food, fuel, clean water and medicines, and provide for our social, cultural and spiritual needs. Yet, due largely to human actions, biodiversity has been declining around the globe, including within the terrestrial, freshwater and coastal habitats of the UK. Despite the aims of the Convention on Biological Diversity there is little evidence to suggest any decline in the rate of these losses. Biological monitoring allows not only the quantification of rates of change but, together with experimental and modelling approaches, also improves understanding of the drivers and processes of change, and allows the development of better strategies to protect biodiversity.

The UK boasts a rich history of biological and ecological surveying, monitoring and research, but very few monitoring programmes have been maintained for long enough to provide definitive data on long-term trends and provide the necessary guidance for future management. Those that have survived face an uncertain future, particularly in the current economic climate, while developments in scientific understanding and instrumentation reveal new areas of concern and opportunity where monitoring should play an important role in the future.

Through a series of talks from invited speakers this conference aims to:

1. consider current and likely future national requirements for biodiversity monitoring and research;

2. demonstrate the ways in which long-term studies have contributed to our understanding of key biodiversity-related issues;

3.  illustrate through case-studies the challenges faced in improving the quality, reliability and efficiency of measurements; data processing, interoperability and analysis; and the communication of results;

4. explore opportunities to improve monitoring capability through recent developments in science,  instrumentation, and public participation, and

5. consider the potential for synergies between programmes and future directions for this area of research.

In addition to oral presentations, group discussion sessions will enable delegates to pursue key issues in greater depth. On the basis of these discussions and presentations the conference will formulate recommendations for the improvement and future development of biodiversity monitoring and research in the UK and elsewhere.

Although the emphasis will be on the UK, the conference will be of international relevance, since many of the issues to be discussed are essentially global and often the solutions require international cooperation.
 

Registration
To register your interest, please complete this registration form. The conference delegate fee is £60. Please refer to these payment instructions.

Conference organisers:	A contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity
Advisory Board members drawn from: Countryside Council for Wales ● Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ● Environment Research Funders' Forum ● Marine Biological Association  ● Natural England  ● Natural History Museum ● Scottish Natural Heritage