Monitoring of vegetation and bulk soil measurements at seven potentially vulnerable Natura 2000 sites in England and Wales and model-based analysis of the data. Fifth report to the power station and refinery operators (final draft)

Monteith, Don ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3219-1772; Smart, Simon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2750-7832; Jarvis, Susan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6770-2002; Evans, Chris ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7052-354X; Rose, Rob; Henrys, Peter ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4758-1482; Carter, Heather ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5999-2732; Keenan, Patrick. 2015 Monitoring of vegetation and bulk soil measurements at seven potentially vulnerable Natura 2000 sites in England and Wales and model-based analysis of the data. Fifth report to the power station and refinery operators (final draft). Lancaster, NERC/Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, 80pp. (CEH Project no. C04409) (Unpublished)

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Abstract/Summary

Operators of power stations and refineries in England and Wales who “opted in” to the Large Plant Combustion Directive (LCPD) are required by the UK Environment Agency to undertake “a monitoring programme to assess changes in acidification and eutrophication deposition and ecological effects at appropriate Natura 2000 sites”, as part of the operating permit improvement conditions for plant. A formal response outlining this monitoring programme was submitted to, and accepted by, the Environment Agency in March 2008. The NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology were awarded a four year contract to implement the monitoring in 2011. The monitoring programme is based on protocols for ecological and deposition monitoring at Natura 2000 sites approved by the Environment Agency in September 2010, and is intended to complement a previous modelling assessment review conducted by the Environment Agency in relation to the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control permitting for UK refineries and coal-fired power stations. Following discussions between the installation operators, the Environment Agency, Natural England and Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) (now Natural Resources Wales (NRW), seven Natura 2000 sites were selected for inclusion in the network of sites (now known as the Habitats Monitoring Network (HMN), including at least one site relevant to each of the 13 participating installations. As sulphur deposition was the dominant issue associated with power station and refinery emissions, sites were selected on the basis of the installation’s modelled percentage contribution to the minimum site-relevant critical load for sulphur (CLmaxS), plus the percentage contribution to total sulphur deposition and total acid deposition, while the absolute level of sulphur deposition arising from the installation was also taken into account. Monitoring has focused on three components relating to the conservation objectives of the selected sites: 1. Prevailing levels of acidifying deposition and any changes in acidification deposition over the period of monitoring. 2. Prevailing levels of eutrophying deposition and any changes in eutrophication deposition over the period of monitoring. 3. Prevailing ecological condition and any changes in the ecological condition over the period of monitoring. This is the fifth report to the Power Station and Refinery Operators detailing data collected over the course of the programme, and the second to report on vegetation and bulk soil monitoring data. The previous report covering the latter area was the third report, submitted in December 2013, which summarised vegetation and soil data collected during the field campaign in the summer of 2011, and introduced an approach to assessing the environmental suitability of the habitats for a range of indicator plant species according to the application of the statistically-based model Multi-MOVE. In the current report we append comparable data collected in the summer of 2014, assess any evidence for biological or soil chemical differences between the two surveys, and conduct a more detailed examination of habitat suitability using Multi-Move. The Multi-Move assessment includes use of a wider ensemble of models (n = 5) than previously (n = 3), in order to provide a greater degree of confidence in the interpretation of the data, and some refinement to model parameterisation.

Item Type:	Publication - Report
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Emmett Parr Shore
Funders/Sponsors:	E.ON
NORA Subject Terms:	Earth Sciences Ecology and Environment Atmospheric Sciences Botany
Date made live:	07 Mar 2016 14:42 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/513140

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