Tools to support butterfly monitoring and analysis. Technical report

This report summarises the work within ABLE to contribute to the development of a unified system of validated and standardised butterfly counts from across European monitoring schemes. The primary aim is to provide the technical infrastructure to support the development of butterfly monitoring schemes within EU member states and regular reports on butterfly indicators and to enrich research on biodiversity. To achieve this objective, this report summarises work on the following activities: 1. Produce an effective database for butterfly monitoring records to ensure secure long-term data storage and provide with the capability to produce a suite of butterfly indicators; 2. Establish legal data-sharing agreements with existing monitoring schemes to clarify intellectual property rights and rights of access to data; 3. Gather data annually from existing monitoring schemes, standardise and validate counts, populate database; 4. Extend online data entry systems to allow new countries to submit data efficiently and in a standard format; 5. Develop and test a mobile application for capturing timed counts of butterflies across Europe, supporting a new protocol developed in this project; 6. Provide training for monitoring scheme volunteers and scheme co-ordinators in the use of the online data entry system and data analysis tools; 7. Provide tools, training and online resources for calculating national butterfly population trends; 8. Make BMS records and metadata available in a standard and validated format for research as appropriate.