United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: collated indices 2016

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Last updated:
16 February 2023
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Summary

Collated indices are a relative measure of butterfly abundance across monitored sites in the UK, calculated from data collected by the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS). Collated indices are calculated annually for each individual butterfly species that has been recorded on five or more sites in that year. Based on this criterion collated indices have been calculated for the entire UKBMS time series from 1976 to the current year for the majority of species. For some rarer species the time series starts in a later year due to lack of data. Collated indices are calculated using a statistical model that accounts for missing data. The number of sites for each species ranges from 5 to several hundred and varies from year to year. Since 2008 more than 1,000 sites have been monitored across the UK each year. Collated indices are calculated so that we can determine how butterfly populations are changing over time across the UK. This data can be used, for example, to determine where to target conservation efforts and to measure the condition of the UK countryside. Butterflies are recognised as important indicators of biodiversity and environmental change (e.g. as official UK Biodiversity Indicators), and have been used in numerous research studies to understand the impacts of changes in climate and the extent and condition of habitats. Although the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and Butterfly Conservation (BC) are responsible for the calculation and interpretation of the Collated indices, the collection of the data used in their creation is ultimately reliant on a large volunteer community. The UKBMS is funded by a consortium of organisations led by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). This dataset is updated annually and more recent versions of the UKBMS collated indices are available. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/009334d6-ee33-43fc-a259-bf4d92fb69dc

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Added to data.gov.uk
2023-02-09T11:09:08
Access contraints
If you reuse this data, you should cite: Botham, M., Roy, D., Brereton, T., Middlebrook, I., Randle, Z. (2017). United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: collated indices 2016. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/009334d6-ee33-43fc-a259-bf4d92fb69dc
Harvest GUID
009334d6-ee33-43fc-a259-bf4d92fb69dc
Extent
Latitude: 60.861° to 49.864°
Longitude: -8.648° to 1.768°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
2017-12-01 (publication)
2016-12-31 (creation)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (pointOfContact); Butterfly Conservation (pointOfContact, author); NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre (custodian); NERC Environmental Information Data Centre (publisher); Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (author)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
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