The first major review of trends in terrestrial ecology at twelve key sites within the UK Environmental Change Network between 1993 and 2007 has been published in the journal Biological Conservation. Britain's soils, vegetation and animal communities all show indications of responses to environmental change over the study period.

The Environmental Change Network is coordinated by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and sponsored by a consortium of fourteen UK government departments and agencies, and research organisations. It seeks to identify and understand long-term changes in UK ecosystems. Data are collected at sites ranging from upland areas such as the Cairngorms and Snowdonia to lowland sites located in southern England and Northern Ireland.

All sites studied experienced increases in temperature over the analysis period. The acidity of rainfall fell sharply, particularly at sites where atmospheric pollution is highest in the south of the country. Both these patterns are characteristic of wider changes across the UK. Reductions in the acidity of rainfall were associated with a trend toward less acidic soils. Trends in nitrogen pollution differed between sites, but levels of ammonia (a nitrogen-containing gas released from intensive agriculture that acts as a plant nutrient source) remain high at some sites.

Butterfly species characteristic of warmer regions tended to increase at northern, upland sites, consistent with an effect of increasing temperatures. In contrast, ground beetles associated with cooler northern and upland areas showed declining populations. Wetter weather in more recent years may explain a decline in short-lived "weedy" plants at lowland sites, reversing an increase associated with drought in the early years of monitoring. However, there was no clear evidence of changes in plant communities in response to decreased soil acidity.

Network coordinator and co-author Don Monteith from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said, "The great strengths of the Environmental Change Network are that we are monitoring both the key drivers of change and a wide range of components of the ecosystem in the same location, and that this is repeated at sites across the UK.

"By combining our observations with more widely spread surveys of individual plant and animal groups, and by encouraging the use of Environmental Change Network sites for experiments, we greatly enhance our ability to detect and attribute the causes of environmental change. This is essential for the development of conservation policy and management in the 21st century."

The research team state in the paper that the first fifteen years of the Environmental Change Network has provided a very clearly defined ecological baseline for these sites against which future changes can be judged and conservation responses developed. The data from the Environmental Change Network are already beginning to pick up signals of change in a range of measurements at contrasting sites, raising a number of important questions that the scientific team are now investigating in greater detail.

Lead author Dr Mike Morecroft, Principal Climate Change Specialist at Natural England said, "Climate change is one of the major contemporary issues in ecology and presents the most profound challenge for conservation in the coming decades. The need for reliable monitoring of environmental change, both physical and biological, is greater than ever.

"Our analysis does suggest that climate change is starting to influence some aspects of the ecology of the UK. It also shows that climate change must be addressed in the context of a wide range of other environmental issues, such as changes in air pollution."

The research was carried out by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Natural England, North Wyke Research, Forest Research, Rothamsted Research, Durham University, ADAS UK Ltd., Macaulay Institute and Countryside Council for Wales.

The research was published on 6 November 2009 in the journal Biological Conservation. The paper reference is: M.D. Morecroft, C.E. Bealey, D.A. Beaumont, S. Benham, D.R. Brooks, T.P. Burt, C.N.R. Critchley, J. Dick, N.A. Littlewood, D.T. Monteith, W.A. Scott, R.I. Smith, C. Walmsley and H. Watson (2009) The UK Environmental Change Network: Emerging trends in the composition of plant and animal communities and the physical environment. Biological Conservation, 142/12: 2814 - 2832

Posted on Environment Times online on 9th November 2009.