The Bunce legacy: a framework for landscape monitoring in the UK

Wood, Claire ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0394-2998; Norton, Lisa ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1622-0281. 2025 The Bunce legacy: a framework for landscape monitoring in the UK. [Lecture] In: IALE 2025 European Landscape Ecology Congress: Landscape Perspectives in a Rapidly Changing World, Bratislava, 2-5th September 2025. (Unpublished)

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Abstract/Summary

In the UK, the late Professor Bob Bunce developed an approach to landscape monitoring involving a stratified sampling strategy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The strategy facilitated large-scale landscape estimates and assessments of land use information, including farmland habitats and plant species, from a statistical sample of survey sites. The success of the approach at smaller scales led to a series of ongoing national monitoring programmes, managed by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, which are currently the longest running and most comprehensive ecological surveys in the UK. Data collected during these surveys is critical to the understanding of the extent of farmed land in the UK and its relevance for the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services (as well as production). Notably, the Countryside Survey of Great Britain has been running since 1978 and has been repeated at approximately decadal intervals, until 2019 when it became an annual rolling programme. The programme is flexible, and has been used to evaluate agricultural impacts on habitats and plant species including agri-environment schemes and nitrogen deposition. For example, it recently enabled an assessment of hedgerows in England to be carried out in 2023. The linked Countryside Survey in Northern Ireland has been running since 1986 and has just undergone a repeat survey in the last 2 years. In Wales, the Bunce methods have been adapted to develop the Environmental Monitoring and Monitoring Programme (ERAMMP) field survey – a comprehensive integrated assessment of the Welsh landscape. An overview of the stratified sampling approach will be described including a description of the approaches to calculating state and change in agricultural landscapes, in particular, changes in farmland plants and habitats. Background to the latest monitoring programmes will be given and some key findings from the Countryside Surveys and ERAMMP will be presented, with an emphasis on potential farmland indicators.

Item Type:	Publication - Conference Item (Lecture)
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Biodiversity and Land Use (2025-)
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment
Date made live:	17 Sep 2025 12:08 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/540198

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