Survey of the terrestrial habitats and vegetation of Shetland, 1974 – a framework for long-term ecological monitoring

Abstract

Abstract.A survey of the natural environment was undertaken in Shetland in 1974, after concern was expressed that large-scale development from the new oil industry could threaten the natural features of the islands. A framework was constructed by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology on which to select samples for the survey. The vegetation and habitat data that were collected, along with the sampling framework, have recently been made public via the following doi:10.5285/06fc0b8c-cc4a-4ea8-b4be-f8bd7ee25342 (Terrestrial habitat, vegetation and soil data from Shetland, 1974) and doi:10.5285/f1b3179e-b446-473d-a5fb-4166668da146 (Land Classification of Shetland 1974). In addition to providing valuable information about the state of the natural environment of Shetland, the repeatable and statistically robust methods developed in the survey were used to underpin the Countryside Survey, Great Britain's national long-term integrated environmental monitoring programme. The demonstration of the effectiveness of the methodology indicates that a repeat of the Shetland survey would yield statistics about ecological changes in the islands, such as those arising from the impacts of the oil industry, a range of socio-economic impacts, and perhaps climate change. Currently no such figures are available, although there is much information on the sociological impacts, as well as changes in agriculture.

Long-term vegetation monitoring in Great Britain – the Countryside Survey 1978–2007 and beyond

“…The first national series of stratified random samples was the 1971 Woodland Survey (Wood et al, 2015) and strategic sampling at the landscape level was subsequently used successfully in defining the range of variation in vegetation in regional surveys in Cumbria and Shetland (Bunce and Smith, 1978;Wood and Bunce, 2016). These methods have now been proven as a successful national vegetation monitoring strategy incorporating four surveys across nearly 30 years.…”

“…It is now possible to perform much wider analyses than previously, using a range of ancillary explanatory datasets, as described in the Integrated Assessment Report for the Countryside Survey (Smart et al, 2010a). The underlying principles of the Countryside Survey methodology provide an ideal framework for the planning of large-scale monitoring, not only in Britain but across Europe and worldwide, as discussed in Wood and Bunce (2016).…”

“…As a result of the earlier work carried out in the 1970s on a regional scale (Wood and Bunce, 2016;Bunce and Smith, 1978), a sample unit of 1 km square was found to be an appropriate size for CS. It also forms the basic unit of the stratification framework described below.…”

“…The history of the development of the methodology is given by Sheail and Bunce (2003). The survey is based on 1 km squares as a convenient sized unit, which had previously been tested in Cumbria (Bunce and Smith, 1978) and Shetland (Wood and Bunce, 2016) in the years preceding the first survey in 1978. The survey design is based on a series of dispersed, stratified, randomly selected 1 km squares from across Britain, which numbered 256 in 1978Britain, which numbered 256 in , 506 in 1990Britain, which numbered 256 in , 569 in 1998Britain, which numbered 256 in and 591 in 2007.…”

Ecological landscape elements: long-term monitoring in Great Britain, the Countryside Survey 1978–2007 and beyond

“…With the inclusion of the vegetation data (as described in Wood et al, 2017), soils and freshwater data Dunbar et al, 2010;Williams et al, 2010;Carey et al, 2008), the survey as a whole provides a wide range of nationally significant ecological datasets, globally unique in their geographical coverage and time span. The co-registration of all the data, in both time and space, along with the flexibility in coding make the datasets unique in describing and interpreting the drivers of change in the British landscape.…”