A Brief History of SEDN and how it Works

Transcription

1 A Brief History of SEDN and how it Works

2 Background - prior to 2002 Most species data was held by: Shropshire Wildlife Trust Focus on Local Wildlife Sites and reserves. Generally un-validated data County and national recording groups Difficult to know who to contact

3 Background - prior to 2002 Problems included: Access to data was via several sources such as Wildlife Trust charge made for consultants Bat Group charge made.. Botanical Society charge made.. Mammal Group charge made.. Ornithological Society charge made.. Habitat data only from National Inventories Species data could be ignored / fudged by consultants, potentially resulting in species loss Wide range of recording software used. Some data only in hardcopy.

4 Background Shropshire Council led an attempt to form a normal Local Records Centre Bill Butcher s report suggested between 97,000 and 109,000 would be required per annum. The result?...

5 Online maps Also in 2003: Shropshire Archives Idea of distributed management Secret of Shropshire biological records was born project: Dan Wrench, Joe Collins and Alex Lockton devised clickable maps that displayed records of vascular plants and Odonata.

6 Idea for SEDN

7 Background Scoping exercise for a Virtual Local Records Centre Funding from the National Biodiversity Network Trust Report by Colin Wright 17 species recording groups were approached 11 would contribute to a virtual records centre 2 interested or unsure 2 no response 2 would not contribute Report is available from

8 Background Natural Shropshire Web site Species maps

9 Background Natural Shropshire Web site Map query of species per tetrad

10 Background Natural Shropshire Web site Zoomable map and additional details

11 Background Natural Shropshire Web site heat map of UK BAP Species

12 Background Shropshire Planning Officers Group Shropshire Council and Shropshire Wildlife Trust secured funding from each District Council to establish a single database that covered the entire county that could be used in Local Authority databases Wildlife Trust acted as the public face of the Records Centre Financial compensation given to those groups who used to charge for records (Plants, Mammals, Bats and Birds)

13 SEDN SEDN established in Natural England allowed us to bend the normal rules of what is a Local Records Centre and provided funding. Funding first provided to Tsars (species data managers) in 2008 Spent 13k and uploaded 45,000 records of axiophytes and 2,000 records of Odonata to the NBN Gateway.

14 SEDN Terms of Reference Vision: SEDN will manage and make available sufficiently comprehensive data to enable well balanced decisions to be made on issues that impact the biodiversity of Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin. And.. Facilitate the gathering of ecological data, making these available as quickly, easily, and cheaply as possible, and to as wide an audience as possible. Focus is on support to County recorder network: Small amounts of funding Training and discussion of data standards

15 SEDN Steering Group Management Sue Townsend Chair / FSC Alex Lockton Coordinator Dan Wrench Financial manager Nicola Stone Finance - manages payments to Tsars Key data providers Pete Boardman Invertebrates Rep Sarah Whild Vascular Plants Rep Jonathan Groom Habitat data Funders Fran Lancaster Telford & Wrekin Council Sue Swales Shropshire Council Andrew Thompson Natural England Rep Caroline Savage Environment Agency

16 Management of SEDN Shropshire Council Financial administration Bids for funding from a variety of sources (including Defra, Natural England, NBN Trust, Tarmac, RSPB) Establishes Memorandum of Agreements with regular funding partners Reports to funding partners on progress Reports to the Shropshire Biodiversity Partnership and the Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin Local Nature Partnership Negotiates the financial agreements and ensures funding requirements are met. Attends the West Midlands Local Record Centres Forum Maintain the web site to be continued

17 Management of SEDN Alex Lockton Coordinator: Provides training and support to tsars Invites bids for funds Reports to the Steering Group on progress Manages the combined dataset and feeds back to the Tsars on possible errors or duplicates Uploads data to the NBN Gateway and the DropBox folder

18 Public face of SEDN Shropshire Wildlife Trust: Responds to enquiries from consultants Provides data to Tsars from volunteers Public face is also the NBN Gateway and the new Online database All records are provided at full resolution for free from these systems. All other record centres in the West Midlands only provide 10km access to the public or block all access in order to protect their income.

19 SEDN Funding Memorandum of Agreements with: Natural England: 10,000 Environment Agency: 8100 Shropshire Council: 7000 Telford & Wrekin Council: 5000 (next year) 100,000 90,000 35,000 80,000 30,000 70,000 25,000 60,000 50,000 20,000 40,000 15,000 30,000 10,000 20,000 5,000 10,000 0 SEDN SEDN Grant Grant Allocation Allocation Average 2013LRC in 2007

20 SEDN funding Funding always comes with strings attached Analysis to determine 1km squares that contain historic, (last recorded in 1993), Habitats & Species Directive (annex 2/4/5) species. These squares to be shared with local volunteers Records of protected, priority and invasive species submitted to the NBN within a minimum of 6 months of receipt. Perform GIS query to determine key hotspots for volunteer recording and identify potential reference sites for structured surveillance. [A survey will be sent around] Perform GIS query to determine potential habitats on those sites to identify possible links that could be made between structured species surveillance and Biodiversity 2020 habitat work

21 SEDN funding More strings Discuss with volunteers options and interest for structured surveillance and determine potential sites for multi-taxa survey. [Bioblitz or perhaps Multiple Organism Days] Online Recording System in Place and offered to local recorders by March records per year need to be recorded online! (i) Provide online recording as an option for volunteers (using a system meeting minimum NBN standards) (ii) Promote online recording highlighting benefits to volunteers as well as savings to data management. [Currently irecord being promoted and former form on Natural Shropshire has been removed thanks to all those who contributed!] (iii) Train volunteers on online recording system (iv) Provide support to volunteers using online systems

22 SEDN Process Sometimes a second bidding round for work already completed AUTUMN Upload data to NBN Secure funding Needs to be flexible due to funding uncertainties Call for bids WINTER Bids approved SPRING Data collation Survey and training SUMMER

23 SEDN Process What are the bidding criteria? Level of expertise Amount, quality and value* of data being provided Standard of validation proposed Addressing SEDN priorities Value for money* * Value of the data is based on the needs of the funders and the likely applicability of the data to land management decisions (including age of the records). We don t pay consultancy rates for survey work. Rather we help current recorders to do a bit more and provide SEDN with the results

24 SEDN Process Who are the Tsars? Pete Boardman John Morgan Fran Lancaster Roy Mantle Sarah Whild John Mackintosh Alex Lockton Shropshire Council John Handley Karen Evans Mark Latham Invertebrates Bats Herptiles; Protected species Fungi Vascular Plants Mammals Coordination; Vascular Plants Management Costs; Habitats Habitat survey Freshwater Sponges Bryophytes; Herptiles Gareth Parry Caroline Savage Ian Cheeseborough Nigel Jones Frances Riding Caroline Uff Graham Walker Sue McLamb Alan Hale Marc Taylor Mammals Crayfish Aculeate hymenoptera Diptera Aquatic invertebrates Coleoptera Birds Odonata Online database Lepidoptera

25 Data flow Volunteer species recorders County recorders NBN Gateway irecord Validation process SEDN Database Spread sheet and MapMate held by all SEDN contributors and by SWT Defra Agencies Online SEDN map Local authorities Consultants, Researchers, etc SEDN data mapped on GIS

26 MapMate is the preferred database but others like Recorder, spread sheets and Access are used. Records are imported into MapMate or entered directly by Tsars to MapMate. All progress reports, the database spread sheet and all one page reports are added to a DropBox folder for all SEDN members. (One page reports are publicly available) Data flow

27 SEDN - progress Number of records per year Year

28 SEDN - progress SEDN now holds 712,465 records of 10,378 species (9,930 on NBN Gateway) without bird data! Removal of mostly Lepidoptera duplicates leaves 665,642 records Breakdown by record resolution: 100m 1km 2km 10km 285,317 records 306,037 records 113,418 records 7,693 records

29 Counts SEDN - progress Chart of number of species per recording group: Groups

30 Counts SEDN - progress Chart of number of species per recording group: SEDN Database Bryophytes Charophytes Fungi Herptile Invertebrates Mammals Vascular Plants

31 SEDN Progress Included in the DropBox folder is a pivot table version of the SEDN database which allows quick Phenology analysis Allium ursinum Anthophora plumipes Galanthus nivalis Lepus europaeus Viscum album Ramsons Hairy-footed Flower Bee Snowdrop Brown Hare Mistletoe

32 What do we want for the future? My thoughts Encourage new recording effort, filling in gaps and correcting errors Supporting training and publications More analysis of the data to help inform policies and target site management Thank you!

33 Useful links (Plus QR codes for the technophiles) The new (and first draft) database for SEDN records for those who don t get on with the NBN Gateway: The full list of reports from SEDN: The Map of Site Based Reports (including most from SEDN): (Due to limitations with Google Maps this may change to a Council map based system soon) Field meetings of a range of groups can be found here: (Please let me know if there are other field meetings that could be added. If everyone used Google Calendar (or exported to it) then we could cover all activities in one calendar that could be shared.)