Module 10 links to the UK Environmental Change Network

Information collected at the Environmental Change Network of sites will provide information on year-to-year variations in vegetation in between successive Countryside Surveys and the associated weather patterns.

• Click here to view the final report for this module

The UK Environmental Change Network (ECN) is a long term monitoring initiative established by a consortium of sponsors. It standardises and co-ordinates work at a series of contrasting sites where a wide range of different aspects of the environment are intensively monitored. ECN and the Countryside Surveys have distinctly different but compatible roles. CS2000 has provided a comprehensive picture of the British countryside based on a large sample of randomly located 1 km squares; visits to these squares are however short and separated by intervals of several years. ECN has a much smaller coverage in terms of land area and its sites are not randomly located; it does however study those sites continuously and in detail. This module was set up to use detailed data from ECN sites to help interpret large scale trends detected by CS2000.

Annual vegetation recording
Vegetation recording is an important part of CS2000 and some large changes have been found between previous surveys. Many of these changes reflect long term trends such as agricultural intensification or the growth of conifer plantations. However it is also possible that year to year variations in vegetation, particularly in response to variations in weather, could affect the results of Countryside Surveys. This is addressed by recording vegetation annually at ECN sites before, during and after the CS2000 field survey. These data can then be analysed to see which vegetation types have been most variable. We can start to explain the reasons behind this variability by using other data collected by ECN, such as for climate, soil water, air pollution and herbivore populations.

The aims of this project can summarised as follows:

• To repeat monitoring of sample plots up to at least 1999.

• To determine the relationship between annual fluctuations in vegetation and weather.

• To assess the extent to which vegetation monitoring in CS2000 is affected by year to year variations in weather.

• To review the protocols for monitoring vegetation at ECN sites with respect to applications in the Countryside Survey and to make recommendations.

Soil Biodiversity
ECN is also helping CS2000 by collecting a series of soil samples for the identification of fauna and assessment of microbial diversity throughout the duration of the CS2000 field survey period. This will show what effect the sampling of different sites at different times is having in the main survey.

Further information on soil biodiversity research can be found within the NERC Soil Biodiversity Programme.

Click here for details of the methods used in this study.