Introduction to the species indicators; data, modelling approaches, and trends.

Christine Holleran4 June 2014

Introduction

• Birds of the wider countryside and at sea

– Farmland birds

– Woodland birds

– Wetland birds

– Seabirds

– Wintering Waterbirds

24 June 2014

Introduction

• Insects of the wider countryside (butterflies)– Semi-natural habitat specialists

– Species of the wider countryside

• Mammals of the wider countryside (bats)

34 June 2014

Data

• Birds

– Compiled in conjunction with RSPB, BTO and JNCC

– Common birds census, breeding bird survey, waterways breeding bird survey, wetland bird survey, goose and swan monitoring programme, seabird monitoring programme, seabird census data.

• Butterflies

– Compiled by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

– UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme transect sites, from this year to be combined with Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey sites.

44 June 2014

Data

• Bats

– Compiled by the Bat Conservation Trust

– National Bat Monitoring Programme

• Birds, butterflies, bats - all updated annually.

54 June 2014

Modelling approaches

• Amalgamating– Geometric mean of individual indices

– Less influenced by outliers

• Smoothing– To reduce short term peaks and troughs

– General Additive Models, Structural Time Series Analysis

• Measure of uncertainty– Confidence intervals: bootstrapping; time series analysis

64 June 2014

Trends

• Birds

74 June 2014

Trends

• Butterflies

84 June 2014

Trends

• Bats

94 June 2014

Fit for purpose?

• Relevance

• Quality of data and analysis

• Transparency of confidence

• Accessibility

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104 June 2014