UK Biodiversity Information Systems

Steve Wilkinson Steve.Wilkinson@jncc.gov.uk

• Where are they / where are they not? • How are they changing? • What is their ecology?

What do we need to know?

What do we need to know?

Pressures

• What pressures are driving change? • How/where are these operating? • How are they changing?

What do we need to know?

Pressures

Actions

• What are we doing / where? • Is it ‘joined up’? • What effect is it having?

Species •  Range of surveillance schemes – good data for a small

number of groups •  Huge amount of unstructured samples •  Value of mobilising these data recognised – led to the

formation of National Biodiversity Network (NBN) •  Invested hard in this area – lot of very dispersed data •  Developed standards to improve data exchange and use •  Tools are what get standards applied!

Species - National Gateway •  http://data.nbn.org.uk •  Now holds over 50 million records from 500 datasets •  Still unique in having controlled access to data •  Allows simple visualisations of the data but also

downloads (in standard format)

Species – next steps •  Exploring and developing uses – difficult given the data

are patchy •  Improving data quality (tools and rules) •  On-line data capture •  Better sharing at broader scales

Habitats •  Broad scale – Land Cover Map

–  Inventory derived from remote sensed data –  Combines soil and digital boundary data –  BUT – coarse and infrequent – value is limited –  Published through a range of portals (NBN and http://

www.magic.gov.uk)

8km across

Habitats •  Broad scale – Land Cover Map •  Local surveys

–  Patchy and not well standardised –  Useful locally but not strategically –  Not really published

Habitats •  Broad scale – Land Cover Map •  Local surveys •  Priority habitats

–  Small patches of habitat with high conservation value –  Derived locally (from local survey) and collated –  Expensive process –  Main value is where it is –  Again published through NBN, http://www.magic.gov.uk etc

Habitats – looking ahead •  Still don’t have a good method of picking up the scale of

habitat change we are expecting •  Developing area for us – extracting more value from

remote sensing

Pressures •  Separate:

–  ‘activity’ - human action that may have an effect –  ‘pressure’ - the mechanism through which an activity has an

effect on any part of the ecosystem

•  Example: Benthic trawling causes siltation, abrasion, noise and removal of species but other activities could also have the effects

Pressures – accessing data •  Clearly getting information goes beyond the biodiversity

sector •  In marine area have established MEDIN – standards and

metadata portal www.oceannet.org •  Needs interpretation to produce the products

Pressures – accessing data •  Terrestrially have established UKEOF (www.ukeof.org) to

develop monitoring catalogue •  Metadata only at the moment •  Big emerging area for the UK – especially in the marine

environment

Action •  What we are doing to address the pressures •  For example:

–  Protected areas –  Habitat restoration or creation –  Incentivising activities

•  Usually target driven and involves many partners

Actions - targets

Global

European

National

Regional

Local

•  Needs co-ordination •  Have developed BARS (ukbap-reporting.org.uk)

Actions – looking ahead •  Not enough content in BARS (tends to be held in local

systems). How to incentivise transfer and sharing? •  Developing standards for exchanging the data •  Making the website more geographical

How far to go?

Metadata only

Metadata and a data standard

Metadata, a data standard and tools

Summary of experience •  Mobilising data is expensive! •  Need to think carefully about whether metadata is

enough •  Data standards more expensive – need to weigh up the

benefits •  Getting standards adopted in hard but can use control,

benefit to provider or tools