Climate change impacts: evidence from ECN sites

We are living through a period of unprecedented global warming. In the UK, this may be having various impacts, as a result of a changing climate, on animal and plant species and the ecosystems they inhabit. Some of these changes may be beneficial, but others may represent a serious threat to ‘ecosystem services’, i.e. the processes by which environments produce resources of benefit to people. The Environmental Change Network (ECN) provides detailed, regular and high quality measurements at a range of sites across the UK to identify and quantify ecological responses to changes in climate and other pressures. This publication highlights some of the findings from ECN monitoring and research which provide evidence of the sensitivity of natural ecosystems in the UK to variability and change in climate. These include assessments of population dynamics, responses to extreme events (drought), changes to the timing of lifecycle events (phenological changes) and biological responses affecting the carbon cycle.