Sustainable Land Management Science Area at CEH

CEH's new Science Strategy identifies three interdependent, major societal and environmental challenges: Securing the Value of Nature, Building Resilience to Environmental Hazards, and Managing Environmental Change. We're delivering our strategy by Science Areas and underpinning activities, and over the next few weeks we are profiling these on our blog. 

This post focuses on our Sustainable Land Management science area, which is led by Dr Richard Pywell. The research we undertake in this area is delivered in the context of ensuring adequate provision of food, fuel and water while conserving biodiversity and vital ecosystem functions.

CEH develops practical solutions to restore and enhance ecosystem
functions that deliver goods and services crucial for human wellbeing,
such as pollination services for crops and biodiversity.

Population increase, climate change, pollution and other environmental stresses are expected to have highly detrimental impacts on ecosystems and natural resources vital for human wellbeing and livelihoods. Therefore novel land management approaches to optimise natural resources are needed.

Fascinating APPG visit to Waddesdon Estate. Learning about @CEHScienceNews research there into agri-ecosystems
— Biodiversity APPG (@BiodiversityAPG) July 17, 2013

via @NERCscience 'Variety the spice of life for insect #pollinators' http://t.co/OLvfbolqnU CEH-led study of mixed flowers on farmland
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) March 27, 2014

CEH's sustainable land management science area aims to understand the threats to semi-natural and highly managed ecosystems, and their component resources. From this understanding, we will develop robust strategies to conserve vital resources and increase their resilience to environmental change. We will also develop practical approaches that can be applied at the field, farm and landscape scale to restore and enhance the ecosystem functions and services crucial for human wellbeing and livelihoods.

Our research activity involves experiments, long-term monitoring, the development of practical land management and restoration techniques, engagement with practitioners and industry and the support of policy development.

..undertaking large-scale experiments eg to measure impacts of pesticides on pollinator populations... pic.twitter.com/u1Fwbd0VqV
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) February 19, 2014

(1/4) Overview of our mesocosm experiment started in Sep looking into effects of various crops on rare arable plants pic.twitter.com/9HkySwUAq6
— Markus Wagner (@Wagner__Markus) December 20, 2013

Ecologists get first bumblebees’ eye view of the landscape – news from today’s pollinators symposium at #INT13 http://t.co/Yre1tTTDo7
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) August 22, 2013

Our science helps to protect, restore and enhance ecosystem functions that support food production, such as pollination and pest control.

Status & Value of Pollinators & Pollination Services - CEH-led summary for National Pollinator Strategy consultation http://t.co/dWH3dVTzff
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) March 11, 2014

National patterns of functional diversity & redundancy in ground beetles + #bees associated with key UK arable crops http://t.co/Lm3k0iCgkk
— Urban Pollinators (@ReadingUrbPolls) September 20, 2013

Aiming for just enough Nitrogen (and not too much!) - new on our blog http://t.co/bcQ8uSo230 #n2013 #nitrogen
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) November 20, 2013

We also engage with practitioners and the farming industry to develop new, innovative eco-intensive farming systems that are practical and commercially viable.

Training farmers in agri-environmental management: the case of Environmental Stewardship in lowland England http://t.co/Ae3JODMvy3 (£)
— CEH Paper Alerts (@CEHPaperAlerts) October 18, 2013

Future objectives include constructing spatial decision-support tools to balance demands on limited land; developing and testing management and restoration strategies; mapping potential deficits and vulnerabilities of pollination and pest control services to environmental stress; and supporting future land management policies that meet the challenges of sustainable intensification and multi-functional land use.

For more details of these and other objectives in our Sustainable Land Management Science Area, see our Science Area Summary [PDF].

Additional information

CEH Science Strategy 2014-2019

CEH Science Areas

Staff page of Dr Richard Pywell, Science Area Lead for Sustainable Land Management

Marine Climate Change scorecards published today for Coastal Margin habitats and Seabirds

The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) published its latest Report Card today (28 November 2013), providing its most comprehensive assessment yet of how climate change is affecting UK waters. CEH coastal ecologists Dr Laurence Jones, Mr Angus Garbutt and Dr Francis Daunt are authors of the scorecards for coastal margins and seabirds, documenting the recent scientific evidence for what will happen in coastal habitats and on seabird populations under climate change. The coastal margin habitats include sand dunes, saltmarsh, machair systems, shingle and maritime cliffs.

Sefton coast sand dunes

All the coastal margin habitats are vulnerable to a wide range of climate impacts. Highly species-rich dune wetlands may dry out in the next 50 years and transform to dry grassland, with the potential loss of many rare species; while in dune and machair systems (a form of coastal grassland unique to Scotland and Ireland) there is evidence of erosional narrowing of beaches and dunes. Sea defence provided by saltmarsh, sand dunes and shingle will face increasing erosional pressure due to sea level rise and storms.

Seabirds have declined by 7.5% in the UK since the turn of the century, and climate warming is considered to be one of the main drivers by altering prey abundance and quality. Models predict that, by 2100, the UK climate will no longer be suitable for some species, with the range of others retracting to northern Scotland. Any increase in the frequency of extreme weather could further impact on seabirds by altering breeding habitat and creating unfavourable foraging conditions.

Seabirds on the Isle of May

The scorecards are produced by the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) and cover more than 30 marine and coastal topics. More than 150 scientists from 55 leading UK science organisations contributed to the 2013 report.

The scorecards are published annually, and provide latest updates on the evidence of recent change and best scientific projections of what is likely to happen in the near future. A summary of the findings for all UK marine and coastal habitats, and the detailed peer-reviewed briefings on all 33 topics can be found on the MCCIP website.

Additional information

The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership was launched in March 2005 and is a partnership between scientists, government, its agencies, non-governmental organisations and industry.

A press release was issued to announce publication of the 2013 Report Card.

Related CEH links

Staff page of Dr Laurence Jones (sand dune expert)

Staff page of Angus Garbutt (saltmarsh expert)

Staff page of Dr Francis Daunt (seabird expert)

Habitat quality, borehole insights & lake studies - CEH paperblog 4

Our latest paperblog highlights some of the recently published scientific papers led by or involving researchers from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

• A study in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment examined relationships between habitat and breeding success for two of our common bird species, the great tit Parus major and the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus. The aim was to determine the potential of these species to act as indicators of food resource availability for birds in managed semi-natural habitats on farmland, thus acting as a measure of the effectiveness of specific management practices under agri-environment schemes. The paper, led by CEH's John Redhead with colleagues Richard Pywell, Richard Broughton and Shelley Hinsley, followed a four-year study of breeding success using 90 nestboxes on arable farmland in central England. Researchers from the RSPB and Bournemouth University also collaborated on the study, which found that habitat within 100m of the nestbox was the most influential on breeding success.
• Dr Chris Huntingford of CEH led a recent study published in the journal Nature, with colleagues from the University of East Anglia and the University of Exeter, which examined shifting patterns of temperature volatility in the climate system. The findings contradicted the sometimes stated view that a warming world will automatically be one of more overall climatic variation. Read CEH's press release and the Nature paper itself.
• CEH scientists often collaborate with our NERC colleagues on particular projects and areas of research. A new paper in PLOS One led by British Geological Survey colleagues is a recent example, in which hydrogeology is used to tackle questions in groundwater ecology. In the study, the team used borehole imaging and invertebrate sampling to shed more light on groundwater ecosystems and their potential ecosystem services. (The paper is open access).
• The Isle of May in the Firth of Forth is the location for one of CEH's most important monitoring projects, a long-term seabird ecology study. Puffins perhaps get the most column inches in coverage of this internationally recognised work, but several species of seabirds are actually monitored on the island. One such species is the European shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis), and a new paper in Ibis reveals more about the dispersal rates and distances of shags colour-ringed as chicks on the Isle of May. The paper led by PhD student Emily Barlow represents a collaboration between CEH and the University of Aberdeen.
• The discharge of pharmaceuticals into the aquatic environment from wastewater is a topical area of discussion for researchers, regulators and the water industry. Professor Andrew Johnson has led a new study evaluating the potential environmental concentrations of four drugs from a group often featured on lists of pharmaceuticals of concern that are discharged into our river systems - the results showed considerable variation in the popularity of the drugs across Europe, with such variations potentially having an effect on the detection of these compounds in sewage effluent or river water. Radboud University and Brunel University scientists collaborated on the paper in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
• Finally for this edition, Dr Bryan Spears from CEH has led an international team of researchers, including from Wageningen in the Netherlands, the Institute Dr Nowak in Germany and New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research in a eutrophication management study. The team looked at the potential for negative ecological impacts following the use of a lanthanum-modified bentonite clay to control phosphorus release from lake bed sediments. The study, published in Water Research, examined 16 case study lakes and the findings have implications for water managers worldwide.

Paulette Burns - Media Coordinator

Additional information

If you'd like a fuller picture of new papers from CEH, just follow the CEH Paper Alerts Twitter feed, which lists CEH peer-reviewed papers newly published online. Full details of Centre for Ecology & Hydrology science publications, including those published in peer-reviewed science journals, are eventually catalogued on the NERC Open Research Archive (NORA).

Those of you who follow the scientific literature will know some journal websites require registration and some are subscription-only. CEH, as part of NERC, is working with publishers and funders to make more of our output open access, and we have indicated above where this is the case.

We also publish lots of our other outputs including biological records atlases and project reports. More details can be found in the publications section of the CEH website.

Biodiversity offsetting: the science behind the policy

The Government's Ecosystems Markets Task Force has put biodiversity offsetting amongst its top five priorities, saying that "it is about regulation, developing a well-defined market which delivers 'net gain' for nature". Dr Bruce Howard, who specialises in Biodiversity Offsetting at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), explains how CEH provides the independent and impartial scientific advice needed by this increasingly important policy measure.

Biodiversity offsetting is the term used for agreements that compensate, in measurable ways, for the losses to habitats and species that result from developments such as housing, railways and airports. It is being used or trialled in more than 20 countries worldwide. There is growing interest in the use of biodiversity offsets in the UK, especially in England. A voluntary approach to biodiversity offsetting was a commitment in the Natural Choice – the Government's environment White Paper published in 2011. In response, here at CEH we are gearing up to ensure that our data and expertise in monitoring and restoring biodiversity play their part in informing decisions about the greater use of offsetting in the UK.

New office development

In its 2010 report on financing nature conservation, the RSPB's economists expressed similar aspirations when they said that a "strong biodiversity offset market has the potential to reduce environmental damage from development, simplify the planning system and increase funding for conservation". Nonetheless, the debate about how offsets might impact on the level of protection that the planning system provides for biodiversity is only just getting going. In a response to a 2011 Government consultation on biodiversity offsets, Wildlife and Countryside Link, a large coalition of conservation organisations, warned that "a poorly implemented offset system could have a negative effect on biodiversity."

Given all the points of view expressed, the independent and impartial scientific analysis by organisations such as CEH should play an increasingly important role. In July 2013, I was awarded a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Knowledge Exchange Fellowship on biodiversity offsetting. Over the coming three years, I will be drawing together expertise from across NERC and beyond to address specific questions important for offset implmentation. These include:

• Most nature conservationists are behind the goal of reversing trends in biodiversity decline, aiming for no overall loss of biodiversity in a particular area, or the country as a whole. Advocates of biodiversity offsetting are motivated by this too. But what role will offsets play in achieving this? The jury will be out for some time yet.
• How can individual species be safeguarded within offset agreements based on habitat? It is not as easy as one might think to establish a population of anything, from adders to yellowhammers, even if an offset site is created and managed by the very best experts.

Working alongside me, Dr Lisa Norton is piloting decision support tools that could be used to inform decisions about how and where to initiate biodiversity offsets. And from September 2013, CEH's Dr Tom Oliver will be developing an indicator of the 'ecological status' of parcels of land. This will consider species that are not on the Government's priority list of species and could help to inform choices about where biodiversity offsets can occur. CEH also has much experience in the area of how the biodiversity value of land can be improved – this is an important requirement for offset creation.

As the UK's Centre of Excellence for integrated research in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, CEH has a unique mix of datasets capable of informing the design and monitoring of offset schemes. For example, our Countryside Survey, which is due to be updated in the next three years, provides the most comprehensive record of the condition of the British countryside. The Biological Records Centre, hosted by us at CEH, holds 27 million records to provide information on the status of and change in UK biodiversity.

Town and countryside

If implementation of offsets is to deliver benefits for biodiversity in many years to come, scientific rigour will be required at every stage. This extends from the methods used to assess the biodiversity present at individual sites proposed for development, through to monitoring the long-term contribution that hundreds of 'offset' sites are making to our national biodiversity asset. After all, biodiversity is just part of a wider suite of ecosystem services which provide everyone in society with valuable natural capital – a resource whose importance is recognised, including by Government.

While the scientific rigour has its place, it should not be forgotten that nature down the street (and over the horizon) matters greatly to people. This is something that is recognised in many aspects of our work at CEH, such as our involvement in citizen science. It appears to me that there is a need to ensure that offset schemes will safeguard biodiversity (and the 'services' it provides) for people, rather than simply for the sake of meeting targets or advancing a new way of financing nature conservation.

Dr Bruce Howard

Additional information

Biodiversity Offsetting activities at CEH