News http://www.ecn.ac.uk News daily 1 2010-08-13T14:43:55Z Role of long term monitoring sites highlighted at statistical society conference http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/ecn-data-ties-2013 ECN data have been presented at a conference in Alaska Last week ECN's Jan Dick and Ron Smith (from CEH) attended the 23rd annual meeting of The International Environmetrics Society  (http://ties2013.com/). During a technical session entitled ‘The evidence base for ecosystem management decisions’, Jan presented work examining different ecosystem service indicators.  She compared indicators selected by ECN site managers (see reference below) with data derived from pan-European databases and computer-modelled output.  The work illustrated the advantages and disadvantages of the bottom-up and top-down identification of ecosystem service indicators.

A paper on ecosystem services at ECN sites was previously published (Dick, J., et al. (2011). A comparison of ecosystem services delivered by 11 long-term monitoring sites in the UK environmental change network. Environmetrics, 22(5), 639-648).

]]> No publisher admin ecosystem services research 2013-06-17T12:46:05Z News Item ECN-related research presented at launch of Cairngorms nature partnership http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/cairngorms-nature A new partnership aimed at driving forward conservation projects in the Cairngorms National Park (UK) to ensure it is in good shape for future generations, was launched by the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment recently. 'Cairngorms Nature' involves a range of partners all with an active role in helping to conserve and enhance the nature and ecosystem services of the Cairngorms National Park. They are responsible for the implementation of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2013-2018, which will deliver an ambitious conservation vision for the UK's largest National Park and contribute to the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy.

At the launch of Cairngorms Nature in May 2013, Dr Jan Dick of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) presented research in the Cairngorms to local stakeholders, and highlighted the value of long-term observations and research.

The work presented is being undertaken as part of the EU-funded OpenNESS project, which aims to translate the concepts of Natural Capital (NC) and Ecosystem Services (ES) into operational frameworks that provide tested, practical and tailored solutions for integrating ES into land, water and urban management and decision-making.

Further information

]]> No publisher admin uplands species protection research public outreach 2013-06-13T08:30:21Z News Item ECN Snowdon hosts MSc student studying re-vegetation of landslips http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/snowdon-msc-landslips Natural Resources Wales and Bangor University are currently hosting an MSc student, Valentina Vitali, at ECN Snowdon. Valentina, who is from Italy, is studying part of the Conservation and Land Management MSc at the university. For her Masters project, she is looking at the re-vegetation of landslips on the ECN site.

Valentina's visit to Snowdon is made possible via the SUFONAMA Erasmus Mundus Programme. Sustainable Forest and Nature Management (SUFONAMA) is an integrated MSc course aimed at qualifying graduates to deal with the enormous challenges in sustainable management of natural resources. It involves a consortium of European universities.

Further information

]]> No publisher admin uplands research 2013-06-12T09:40:39Z News Item Introducing the BES Plants-Soils-Ecosystems special interest group http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/bes-pse-group Plants-Soils-Ecosystems (PSE) is a special interest group of the British Ecological Society. However, you don’t have to be a BES member to join. PSE is a group for people interested in plant-soil interactions, with a focus on biogeochemical cycling, community dynamics, and ecosystem functioning. It maintains an e-mail list to which you can subscribe. It produces a bulletin and also has a Facebook page and Twitter account.

Sign up to the PSE email list by sending an email with the format below to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk. Subject: BLANK; Message: SUBSCRIBE PLANT-SOIL-ECO Firstname Lastname

You can also follow the group on Twitter (@BESPlantSoilEco), or on Facebook.

]]> No publisher admin 2013-06-05T13:40:00Z News Item Take part in National Farm Pollinator Survey on Sunday 9 June http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/national-farm-pollinator-survey This weekend sees Open Farm Sunday on 9 June. Some farms are hosting the National Farm Pollinator Survey, which is a way to help scientists gather information about pollinating insects, and to learn more about this group of creatures. Insects such as bees, wasps, hoverflies and butterflies are critical for the growth of 80% of crops like fruit and vegetables and are therefore vital to British farmers, yet we still have much to learn about their complex ecology.

The survey is organised by ECN partner, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming), and is supported by Cotswold Seeds. Staff from several ECN partner organisations will be taking part in the survey or in other Open Farm Sunday events.

]]> No publisher admin 2013-06-05T11:26:01Z News Item Training course on sampling protocols for ecosystem research http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/expeer-protocol-training News of a training course run by the EU ExpeER project. The ExpeER project is developing and integrating ecosystem research across Europe, by sharing methods, data, models and infrastructures. One of the strands is to develop a set of protocols for common ecological measurements, so that it becomes much easier to analyse ecological change across sites over time. The protocols include; leaf area index; soil biodiversity, structure and processes; land use and management; above-ground biomass, sap flow and evapotranspiration.

The ExpeER Work Package 2 team will be conducting training in these protocols during 2013. One course has already taken place in Italy and this second course will take place in the Netherlands from 26-30 August. It will focus on grasslands.

These courses are aimed at people who are involved in the collection of medium- and long-term ecological data in Europe who are not already supported by the ExpeER project.

If you are interested in attending the course near Amsterdam, The Netherlands, please contact Eva Krab.

 

Two ECN sites, Moor House-Upper Teesdale and Rothamsted, are included in the ExpeER focal sites, and research access to both is possible via the ExpeER Transnational Access scheme. Find out more...
]]> No publisher admin training course External event 2013-06-04T09:40:00Z News Item Reporting on the impacts of climate change on terrestrial biodiversity http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/lwec-report-card New Report Card aimed at policy makers, land managers, environmental consultants and researchers draws on analyses of ECN data. The Living With Environmental Change Partnership (LWEC) has launched the first in a series of report cards providing up-to-date and agreed evidence to help people understand and manage climate change impacts. Terrestrial Biodiversity Climate Change Impacts: Report Card 2012-13 is a 'click-through' expert report which aims to advise government policy makers, land managers, environmental consultants and researchers who need to know what the current evidence indicates and make decisions relating to climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Report Card draws on a wide range of evidence sources, including published analyses of ECN data, and from findings of Defra’s BICCO-Net project (led by the British Trust for Ornithology) to which ECN also contributed.

The publication provides an overview of how climate change is affecting UK biodiversity and potential future changes based on the latest scientific evidence and understanding. It shows where observed changes in UK biodiversity are likely to have been caused by changes in the UK climate over recent decades . It also assesses potential future impacts of climate change on biodiversity. The Report Card summarises 15 technical papers that were commissioned from leading experts. Each technical paper covered a separate topic and was peer-reviewed by experts. The technical papers, which include supporting evidence and sections on knowledge gaps and confidence assessments, can be accessed via links in the Report Card.

The project has been overseen by a working group of senior scientists. Both the card itself and the review papers that support it have been peer-reviewed to ensure scientific rigour and that the consensus view of the scientific community is represented.

Among the ECN-related papers cited as evidence are:

  • Brooks, D.R., et al. (2012) Large carabid beetle declines in a United Kingdom monitoring network increases evidence for a widespread loss in insect biodiversity. Journal of Applied Ecology, 49, 1009-1019.
  • Pozsgai, G. & Littlewood, N.A. (2011). Changes in the phenology of the ground beetle Pterostichus madidus. Insect Science, 18, 462-472.
  • Morecroft, M.D., et al. (2009). The UK Environmental Change Network: Emerging trends in the composition of plant and animal communities and the physical environment. Biological Conservation 142, 2814-2832.
  • Scott, W.A., Pithart, D. & Adamson, J.K. (2008). Long-term United Kingdom trends in the breeding phenology of the Common Frog, Rana temporaria. Journal of Herpetology, 42, 89-96.
  • Morecroft, M.D., et al. (2002). Effects of drought on contrasting insect and plant species in the UK in the mid-1990s. Global Ecology and Biogeography 11, 7-22.

 

To read more about the Report Card and to download a copy, see the LWEC website.

More information

  • The project was funded by Defra and the Natural Environment Research Council and managed by Natural England, working with the Environment Agency. Development of the Report Card was led by Dr Mike Morecroft of Natural England. Mike was previously ECN's Research Coordinator and site manager at ECN Wytham (run by the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology).
  • ECN sites continue to make important contributions to the national scientific evidence base for assessments of this kind, and are particularly valuable in that they provide co-located measurements of the physical environment (i.e. weather data) and data on a range of animal and plant groups. Currently data from both terrestrial and freshwater networks are being analysed with the BICCO-Net2 project as a follow up to the original programme.
]]> No publisher admin climate change biodiversity 2013-05-20T13:30:00Z News Item Research access to Cairngorms and other northerly research bases http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/research-access-to-cairngorms-and-other-northerly-research-bases Information about the upcoming INTERACT Transnational Access call. The ECN Cairngorms site is part of the EU Framework 7 project, INTERACT. This project runs a Transnational Access programme that offers access to 20 research stations in northernmost Europe and the Russian Federation. The sites represent a variety of glacier, mountain, tundra, boreal forest, peatland and freshwater ecosystems, providing opportunities for researchers from natural sciences to human dimension.

The call for proposals for research visits to these stations will be open at the INTERACT website from 1st August – 30th September 2013. This will be for Transnational Access visits taking place between October 2013 and October 2014.

Transnational Access includes:

  • Free access for user groups/users to research facilities and field sites, including support for travel and logistic costs
  • Free access to information and data in the public domain held at the infrastructures.

For full details of the upcoming call, and to pre-register, visit http://www.eu-interact.org/topmenu/news/nyhet/article/save-the-date-61/

Related information

A similar Transnational Access scheme run by the ExpeER project provides research access to Moor House-Upper Teesdale and Rothamsted.
Read more...

]]> No publisher admin 2013-05-10T13:11:23Z News Item Spring has arrived! http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/spring-has-arrived After what seems to have been a long, cold winter, spring has finally arrived, at least to some parts of the UK. March 2013 was the coldest March in the UK since 1962, according to the Met Office, and spring this year seems to have arrived late. However, on our Facebook page we've just posted some photographs of ECN Wytham Woods bathed in Spring sunshine. Our site staff there - Denise and Steffi - report that the buds on the trees are opening and yellow celandines are carpeting the woodland floor.

These photos contrast with the wintry images taken at ECN Snowdon just a few weeks earlier.

In addition to this, Chris, our site manager at ECN Cairngorms, has written a blog article about the arrival of spring in his part of Scotland. Chris reports that migrant birds like wheatears and willow warblers have begun arriving from Africa, which must be a welcome sight.

We're using our Facebook page to share photos of ECN sites, along with other information about the network. We hope you enjoy it. If you do, and you have a Facebook account, please consider 'liking' us!

More information

]]> No publisher admin 2013-05-09T13:25:00Z News Item ECN goes to Greenland! http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/ecn-in-greenland Two CEH ECN staff have recently travelled to Greenland as part of an EU-funded project. The ECN site in the Cairngorms is part of a network of Arctic and subarctic research sites called INTERACT. As an EU-funded project, INTERACT members meet once a year. In early March, the meeting was held in Nuuk, Greenland, and ECN's Andy Sier and Jan Dick attended.

Jan and Andy are primarily involved in INTERACT's outreach work. The Cairngorms site is also open for research visits funded through INTERACT's Transnational Access scheme. When the next TA call is launched we will announce it on the ECN website.

Andy has written a blog about the trip to Greenland.

Further information


]]> No publisher admin 2013-03-28T13:55:00Z News Item New site managers at ECN Wallingford http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/new-site-managers-wallingford Regretfully we recently said farewell to Michèle Taylor, ECN Site Manager at Wytham Woods. Here we introduce the new Site Managers, Steffi and Denise. Following the departure of Michèle, former ECN Site Manager at Wytham Woods in Oxfordshire, the role is being shared by two CEH staff, Stefanie Schäfer and Denise Pallett.

Michèle managed the ECN site at Wytham expertly and she will be much missed. We wish her all the best for the future. Thankfully, Steffi and Denise have stepped in to take her place, and we’re confident they’ll do a great job!

Steffi is a molecular ecologist with a special interest in ticks, mosquitoes, and vector-borne pathogens. She completed her Diploma thesis at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn, Germany, in 1997 and joined CEH in 2003.

Denise is a plant virologist, qualifying with a Ph.D. from Dundee University in 1998. She began working at CEH the same year, and has worked on a range of projects concerned with viruses in plants.

The ECN Site Manager role is a varied one and involves a wide range of tasks such as taking regular measurements, collecting samples for analysis back in the lab, checking the equipment, managing all the data from the site and liaising with visiting researchers. Steffi and Denise are sharing the role, which enables them to continue their on-going scientific work at CEH. We wish them all the best in their new role.

]]> No publisher admin 2013-03-26T09:30:00Z News Item A troublesome wind: new educational walking route near Moor House http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/great-dun-fell-walk The Royal Geographical Society has launched a fact-filled walk in the North Pennines near Moor House, location of Britain's only named wind. 'A troublesome wind' is the intriguing title of a new walk taking in parts of Moor House, now available on the Royal Geographical Society's Discovering Britain website. The route and accompanying information pack enables you to explore the spectacular scenery of the North Pennines and discover why these hills experience some of the most extreme weather in England. You can also hear remarkable accounts of Britain’s only named wind with a reputation for blowing over horses and humans, and you can find out about one man’s lifetime spent observing the weather.

This walk in Cumbria follows the Pennine Way to the summit of Great Dun Fell, the second highest hill in the Pennines. It tells the story of Gordon Manley, the geographer who pioneered the collection of meteorological data.

This memorable walk also includes stories of sheep, socks, snow and spies!

See the Discovering Britain website for details. We're pleased to see that ECN gets a mention! The existence of Gordon Manley's meteorological records was one of the factors in choosing Moor House an ECN site.

]]> No publisher admin 2013-03-14T09:54:27Z News Item US LTER mini-symposium to be webcast http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/us-lter-symposium-webcast The US LTER network is running a mini symposium on "The Globalization of Long Term Ecological Research" and it will be broadcast live on the web, starting on 28 February at 08:30 Eastern Standard Time. The 2013 US LTER mini-symposium themed on "The Globalization of Long Term Ecological Research" at the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC., on Thursday, February 28, will be broadcast live on the web beginning 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The live webcast, a joint effort between the LTER Network Office and NSF can be viewed at http://mtsms.unm.edu/Mediasite/Play/e4f155c231bc4545af7a45b0a079ab8a1d.

Should the live webcast be disrupted or prove impracticable the presentations will be recorded and be published shortly thereafter, with the webcast and the subsequent individual recorded presentations listed in the web event catalog at http://mtsms.unm.edu/Mediasite/Catalog/Full/faea1a29e3704f6db907d8714a9b6f8a21.

Viewers will need the Microsoft Silverlight Player browser plugin to view the webcast. Most people will already have Silverlight installed on their machines; however, an installation link will be provided on the page for those who may not.

For more information about the LTER mini-symposium please see http://www.lternet.edu/node/64808 or the NSF media advisory at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126865.

]]> No publisher admin 2013-02-28T10:10:00Z News Item ECN is now on Facebook http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/ecn-on-facebook ECN has created a Facebook page as part of our communication efforts. Facebook iconIf you are user of Facebook you can find ECN's new Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/EnvChangeNetwork. Please take a look and consider 'liking' the page and/or sharing it with your contacts.

We'll post occasional news items and photos on the page. Our aim is to reach a wider audience than is currently reached via our website, e-mail, etc. and hopefully introduce more people to ECN's long-term monitoring and the research undertaken at ECN sites.

]]> No publisher admin 2013-02-26T17:33:56Z News Item ECN data features in talk on spiders http://www.ecn.ac.uk/news/ecn-spider-data-talk Entomologists in Scotland hear about ECN spider and carabid results. Mike Davidson of the British Arachnological Society gave a talk recently on Spiders as Indicators of Environental Change, during which he referred to provisional analyses of ECN spider data from the Cairngorms. Recent trends in carabid numbers at ECN sites were also presented.

In his talk to the Aberdeen Entomological Club, which took place at the James Hutton Institute, Mr Davidson set out to explore whether spiders were suitable candidates as environmental indicators and whether a citizen science monitoring project would complement existing monitoring networks.

The attributes of spiders which might make them suitable indicators were considered and a comparison was made with freshwater invertebrate monitoring.

Various existing long-term spider data sources were explored, including the Spider Recording Scheme database, the Aphid Monitoring network (SASA) and the Environmental Change Network.

Some results were shown from a recent review of ECN carabid data and this was briefly compared with a provisional analysis of trends in spider data from ECN Cairngorms (kindly supplied by Chris Andrews of CEH). Other museum and survey data sets were also considered as useful additions to the overall data resource.

Spider monitoring is an optional protocol at ECN terrestrial sites.

The British Arachnological Society to promote the study of arachnology in Scotland. To find out more about the BAS, see the Society's website.

]]> No publisher admin public outreach 2013-01-17T13:20:20Z News Item