Cumbrian lakes: community engagement. Stakeholder meeting 3rd Nov 2020

The Cumbrian Lakes Monitoring Platform provides data and knowledge that contribute to our fundamental understanding of lake ecosystem function, and responses to environmental stressors. To maximise the impact of the work done at the Platform, it is important that we engage with the wider community, including universities, Government agencies, non-governmental organisations, charities, the water industry, and the general public. To assess current levels of engagement, and to identify opportunities to build on this level of engagement, we held a virtual meeting in November 2020. This was attended by 36 delegates from a range of organisations (n=17) actively involved in the management and implementation of government policy in the Cumbrian Lakes. The meeting was hosted by the UKCEH as part of the UK-SCAPE national capability programme. The meeting included presentations from UKCEH staff and stakeholders, Q&A sessions, an online survey, and structured break out discussions. Together, these activities allowed attendees to hear about current research at the Cumbrian Lakes, consider what they need the monitoring to deliver, and make suggestions on what could be delivered by the Platform in the future. These activities revealed that the attendees agreed that the Platform has great value as a means of developing understanding of lake ecology, and responses to stressors. Currently, some of our stakeholders make use of data from the platform to contextualise and commission their own work. However, there is a desire within our community for enhanced visibility of data and knowledge from the Platform, and for the creation of materials giving “expert interpretation” of the data, in a readily accessible form. Following this consultation we propose: • To produce new content on the Cumbrian Lakes Monitoring Platform for the new UKSCaPE website, and to promote this via social media and through emails to the Research Forum community. • To produce infographics on the type of data that we collect and analyse from the lakes, and to show some simple ecosystem state indicators, which can also be hosted on the website, and shared via social media.