Modelling Landscape-scale Species Response to Agri-Environment Schemes

Jarvis, S.G.; Staley, J.T.; Siriwardena, G.M.; Seaton, F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2022-7451; Redhead, J.W. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2233-3848; Ward, C.; Upcott, E.; Botham, M.S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5276-1405; Henrys, P.. 2021 Modelling Landscape-scale Species Response to Agri-Environment Schemes. Lancaster, UK, Defra, 153pp.

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Abstract/Summary

Agri-environment schemes (AES) are the most significant environmental policy delivery mechanism in England, and include the conservation of biodiversity as a key objective. Provisional results from the ongoing Landscape-scale species monitoring of AES (LandSpAES) baseline field survey have shown some positive responses of mobile taxa to AES gradients at local (1km2) or landscape (3 × 3km) scales. However, it is not known whether these provisional results might be more broadly applicable outside the regions surveyed in the LandSpAES project, i.e. in other regions, or nationally. Here, we present the findings of an analytical project to explore the use of national Citizen Science (CitSci) scheme data, to investigate whether similar relationships with AES gradients would be found at a national scale in CitSci data to those shown with LandSpAES data, and whether integrated modelling was possible with combined CitSci and LandSpAES datasets. The design of LandSpAES has high power to detect AES effects, including the independent testing of the local and landscape AES gradients, but is restricted to six regions. The national CitSci are more representative of England as a whole, but have not been designed to detect AES effects. The aim of this project was to determine whether the provisional taxon responses to the AES gradients found in the LandSpAES project could be detected at a national scale using CitSci scheme data. To achieve this aim, three key questions were addressed through the analytical work: 1) Can addition of covariates account for environmental variation between survey squares in each dataset, to improve the comparability of AES gradient effects between LandSpAES and CitSci schemes? 2) Do the CitSci scheme datasets show similar relationships between taxa responses and the AES gradients, to those found with the LandSpAES data? 3) Can integrated approaches to combining datasets be used to jointly model CitSci and LandSpAES data, and does integrated modelling reduce uncertainty in quantifying the effects of AES gradients on taxa responses at a national scale across England?

Item Type:	Publication - Report (Project Report)
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Biodiversity (Science Area 2017-)
Funders/Sponsors:	Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Natural England project LM04109, UKCEH Project no. C07678
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment Agriculture and Soil Science
Date made live:	19 Dec 2022 14:20 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/533498

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