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The purpose of this work was to provide more in-depth analysis of the field survey data collected under the GMEP project between 2013 – 2016 to inform both future analysis of Glastir outcomes and the design of the Sustainable Farm Scheme in Wales.

Six scenarios consisting of changes in farm-gate prices (T1 to T6) have been applied to the ERAMMP Integrated Modelling Platform (IMP) to simulate impacts on land use change, biodiversity and ecosystem services (carbon, water quality and air quality). The scenarios were based on discussions held between stakeholders in the Evidence and Scenario subgroup (Roundtable Wales and Brexit1) and Welsh Government (WG) policy officials. These discussions took place in late 2020 before the arrangements for the UK leaving the EU were agreed, therefore are based on broad assumptions around the detail of the trade agreement with the EU as well as other third countries including Australia, New Zeland and USA. It is important to note that the outputs of these discussions which were used as inputs into the ERAMMP IMP may therefore not accurately reflect the outcomes achieved within the finalised trade agreements. The T1 scenario assumes no EU trade deal and trade liberalisation, with no tariffs applied to imported products and T2 an EU trade deal with no change to the trade arrangements with third countries. These two scenarios used the changes to farm-gate prices modelled by FAPRI2. The assumptions used in the T3 to T6 scenarios were based on expert opinion from the stakeholder group, and include impacts on farm-gate prices which potentially could have resulted from different combinations of trade deals with New Zealand, Australia and USA. Scenarios which include “no EU deal” options (T1 and T4) are no longer relevant. In no way whatsoever do T1, T3, T4, T5 and T6 represent a WG position; our understanding of the nature and impact of new and emerging trade deals has evolved significantly and the WG Trade Policy Team lead in this area. The objective of this work was to gain an early understanding of how changes in farm-gate prices potentially resulting from trading relationships may influence land use and subsequently effect entry into the Sustainable Farming Scheme. We note that ma

Grassland fertilisation drives non-random plant loss resulting in areas dominated by perennial grass species. How these changes cascade through linked trophic levels, however, is not well understood. We studied how grassland fertilisation propagates change through the plant assemblage into the plant–flower-visitor, plant–leaf miner and leaf miner–parasitoid networks using a year's data collection from a long-term grassland fertiliser application experiment. Our experiment had three fertiliser treatments each applied to replicate plots 15 m2 in size: mineral fertiliser, farmyard manure, and mineral fertiliser and farmyard manure combined, along with a control of no fertiliser. The combined treatment had the most significant impact, and both plant species richness and floral abundance decreased with the addition of fertiliser. While insect species richness was unaffected by fertiliser treatment, fertilised plots had a significantly higher abundance of leaf miners and parasitoids and a significantly lower abundance of bumblebees. The plant–flower-visitor and plant–herbivore networks showed higher values of vulnerability and lower modularity with fertiliser addition, while leaf miner–parasitoid networks showed a rise in generality. The different groups of insects were impacted by fertilisers to varying degrees: while the effect on abundance was the highest for leaf miners, the vulnerability and modularity of flower-visitor networks was the most affected. The impact on the abundance of leaf miners was positive and three times higher than the impact on parasitoids, and the impact on bumblebee abundance was negative and double the magnitude of impact on flower abundance. Overall, our results show that while insect species richness was unaffected by fertilisers, network structure changed significantly as the replacement of forbs by grasses resulted in changes in relative abundance across trophic levels, with the direction of change depending on the type of network. Synthesi

We report the development of a new indicator of the status of biological diversity for Wales: indicator 44 for the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act (2015). The focus of this work is on combining data into a single indicator of change in the distribution of section 7 species over time. Sections 2 to 6 of this report and the proposed indicators focus on terrestrial and freshwater species only. There are numerous challenges in applying the methodology to marine species and these are summarised in section 7 of the report. A new Indicator 44 “Status of biological diversity in Wales” has been developed1. • A section 7 species indicator for Wales has been produced based on trends derived from updated National Recording Scheme and Society (NSS) datasets. This combines annual estimates of change in the proportion of occupied sites in 1x1km squares in Wales for 113 species. • In the long-term period (1970-2016), the index of distribution change for section 7 priority species in Wales had declined to 87% of its baseline value in 1970. This is considered a statistically significant decrease and the indicator is therefore assessed as decreasing. Over this long-term period, 16% of species showed a strong or weak increase and 34% showed a strong or weak decline. • Over the short-term period (2011-2016), the value of the indicator increased from 85 to 87 and was assessed as stable. Between 2011 and 2016, 35% of species showed a strong or weak increase and 19% showed a strong or weak decline. Comparison of the overlap between LERC and NSS data showed significant potential value in including LERC records in Indicator 44. • Ongoing work has sought to quantify the additional contribution to trend assessment and indicator development that could be made by the inclusion of Welsh Local Environmental Records Centre (LERC) datasets. In doing so, new tools have been developed to interrogate the LERC data and to identify extra records (combinations of date, species and 1km grid sq

Field handbook for the 2018-2022 Bunce Broadleaved Woodland Survey of Great Britain and Scottish Pinewod Survey

i. We report interim progress on work to develop a new indicator of the status of biological diversity for Wales: indicator 44 for the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act (2015). The focus of this work is on combining data into a single indicator of change in the distribution of section 7 species over time. ii. Ongoing work has sought to quantify the additional contribution that could be made by Welsh LERC records. In doing so new tools have been developed to interrogate the LERC data and to identify extra records (combinations of date, species and 1km grid square) over and above those in existing national surveillance scheme datasets for Wales. iii. The scale and complexity of this task has been such that we cannot currently report the size of the LERC contribution. This is also in part because criteria for selecting additional data are likely to need discussion and agreement with our project partners. iv. By the end of the project we plan to have produced new updated annual trends for section 7 species that include national scheme and LERC data where possible. v. In parallel, a new and updated section 7 species indicator for Wales has been produced based on updated national scheme datasets. This combines annual estimates of change in the proportion of occupied sites in 1x1km squares in Wales for 113 species. vi. In the long-term period (1970-2016), the index of distribution change for section 7 priority species in Wales had declined to 87% of its baseline value in 1970. This is considered a statistically significant decrease and the indicator is therefore assessed as decreasing. Over this long-term period, 16% of species showed a strong or weak increase and 34% showed a strong or weak decline. vii. Over the short-term period (2011-2016), the value of the indicator increased from 85 to 87 and was assessed as stable. Between 2011 and 2016, 35% of species showed a strong or weak increase and 19% showed a strong or weak decline. viii. New results for an exper

The Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (GMEP, https://gmep.wales/) was at the forefront of the ecosystem approach to monitoring the impact of Pillar II schemes across the European Union - as recognised by the European Commission’s Monitoring and Evaluation Help Desk. GMEP also recruited a large sample of counterfactual “wider Wales” sites, thus enabling additional all Wales reporting. GMEP and other assimilated data represents a significant source of robust, timely and spatially relevant evidence which can contribute to SoNaRR. To facilitate use of GMEP data in SoNaRR, we present new analyses of national monitoring data which has been co-developed with SoNaRR technical leads at Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

the ERAMMP Year 1 activities and sub-reports fall under three categories: modelling; monitoring; and data and analysis.

The National Plant Monitoring Scheme, coordinated by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, JNCC and Plantlife, was launched in 2015 to provide an indication of the status and trends of plants and semi-natural habitats across the UK. The scheme is based on volunteer recording according to a set protocol at pre-determined monads selected through a weighted-random sampling scheme.

This paper describes the relationship between the landscape and the socio-economic and political characteristics of a highly biodiverse Andean region of Colombia, which is now recovering from the socio-ecological impact of protracted armed conflict. We quantify the current spatial relationship between nature and society, and we include legacy effects from the most recent period of armed conflict and its consequences of forced displacement and land use disruption. The procedure followed provides a quantitative model where a minimum number of socio-economic and political variables explain the variation in land cover. The results represent the relationship between land use intensity and the main socio-economic and political indicators, highlighting a close interaction between landscape configuration, socio-economic structure of local populations, coercive conservation and armed conflict. A simulated post-conflict landscape shows a clear transition gradient towards agrarian expansion and intensification, also in systemswhere naturalness is a relevant feature. The peace process in Colombia offers opportunities for new schemes of land planning and management, including natural resource governance and policy reforms to improve welfare and resilience of local communities. The results allow to define options for future planning given the possible consequences of socio-political legacy effects yet to fully play out across Colombia.

Developing a holistic understanding of the ecosystem impacts of global change requires methods that can quantify the interactions among multiple response variables. One approach is to generate high dimensional spaces, or hypervolumes, to answer ecological questions in a multivariate context. A range of statistical methods has been applied to construct hypervolumes but have not yet been applied in the context of ecological data sets with spatial or temporal structure, for example, where the data are nested or demonstrate temporal autocorrelation. We outline an approach to account for data structure in quantifying hypervolumes based on the multivariate normal distribution by including random effects. Using simulated data, we show that failing to account for structure in data can lead to biased estimates of hypervolume properties in certain contexts. We then illustrate the utility of these “model-based hypervolumes” in providing new insights into a case study of afforestation effects on ecosystem properties where the data has a nested structure. We demonstrate that the model-based generalization allows hypervolumes to be applied to a wide range of ecological data sets and questions. © 2019 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Ecological Society of America

I. Better use of Local Environmental Record Centre (LERC) data in delivering biodiversity objectives is stated explicitly in the Nature Recovery Action Plan for Wales. Consistent with this aspiration we carried out two quantitative assessments of LERC data to determine the availability of species records at the resolution required for ERAMMP and WFG (Indicator 44) evidence needs; <=1km. II. A comparison of the availability of 1km square records for section 7 reptiles, amphibians and mammals between LERC and NBN Atlas showed that LERC data were more numerous in every case and sometimes markedly so (on average 17 times as many 1km square records in LERC data). For these species the NBN Atlas tends to have a greater number of records available at 10 rather than 1km square resolution. III. An assessment of the contribution of LERC 1km square records to national trends modelling demonstrated that substantial benefits in increased species coverage and precision of modelled trends are likely to arise by including additional LERC data alongside surveillance scheme data already used for trends modelling. By combining datasets the number of species that could be modelled increased by 267% on average across all the taxonomic groups previously modelled. IV. The design of the new Wales-only Indicator 44 “status of biological diversity” is currently under consultation. Our results show that species coverage for this indicator will benefit from combining multiple datasets with the current analytical state-of-the-art for trends modelling. While results are always dependent on sufficient data, there would seem to be scope for exploring how an ecologically more comprehensive Indicator 44 could be developed in partnership with Wales LERC and others. V. Our assessment also suggests that exploiting the more numerous 1km square records for section 7 species will increase the chances of detecting legacy and future effects of management scheme interventions for biodiversity and resilience

New analysis was carried out to explore the reported loss of topsoil-C between 2007 and 2016 in the ‘Habitat’ category in the final GMEP report. This ‘Habitat’ category is defined as all habitats except woodlands, arable and improved grassland. The GMEP survey squares were selected using Countryside Survey protocols stratified according to Land Classes. The final GMEP survey sample from 2012-2016 consists of 7% previously surveyed Countryside Survey squares. Further analysis was needed to explore, and account for, unintended shifts in environmental variables which could have contributed to the reported topsoil carbon decline. The results indicate: 1. The reported change in the ‘Habitat’ category is driven by trends in upland habitats (median elevation of 400m). 2. In upland habitats, soil carbon is positively associated with dwarf shrub cover (particularly ericoid e.g. heather cover), Sphagnum, presence of peat, elevation and moisture conditions. 3. The coverage of dwarf shrubs was lower in GMEP than in Countryside Survey 2007, mostly due to lower cover of ericoids i.e. heather. This is consistent with decreasing soil carbon in upland habitats. Other variables (i.e. potential drivers) did not differ between surveys, or direction of change was inconsistent with reported C trends. 4. Re-analysis of Countryside Survey data (1978-2007) provides evidence that shifts over time from dwarf shrub to grass-dominated habitats are associated with a decline in topsoil carbon. 5. Overall, this suggest a potential role of ongoing vegetation change in upland habitats (i.e. conversion of dwarf shrub to grass-dominated) contributing to topsoil carbon loss. Further work is needed to: • Confirm recent vegetation change in upland habitats using independent data e.g. satellite data; • Explore relationships between specific plant species and topsoil carbon in Countryside Survey where we have a high number of true repeat samples; This work highlights the importance of the findings of the n

The aim of the Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and other monitoring activities review is to recommend where the key opportunities exist to address evidence gaps, better align activities and reduce duplication. This should not duplicate the intensive work involving more than 40 organisations and over 100 individuals which resulted in the ‘Options for a New Integrated Natural Resource Monitoring Framework for Wales’ 1 review which identified more than 180 monitoring schemes and provided 6 independent reviews of new opportunities for the monitoring community.

A reduction in the number of GMEP squares to be revisited in the ERAMMP field survey is required to meet budgetary constraints whilst ensuring the survey will deliver the most robust evidence base which is responsive to such issues as the actual uptake of different Glastir interventions by contract-holders/land-managers and the capture of those within the baseline GMEP survey. An approach was needed which would maximise outputs matched to policy priorities for assessing national trends, provide evidence for the outcomes of Glastir interventions and optimise where changes were most likely to be detected. The target is to reduce survey squares from 300 to 240 1km squares.

Agri-environment schemes (AES) are one of the most significant mechanism for delivering environmental policy within England, both in terms of expenditure and coverage of land. AES are multi-objective, primarily addressing conservation of wildlife, landscapes and the historic environment and providing public access as well as addressing broader environmental issues such as climate change and flood management. This project contributes to evaluation of the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) AES, which was designed to achieve the highest standards of environmental management and target features of the greatest conservation value, including Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). Monitoring is a key element of scheme delivery in order to assess the efficacy of AES, and determine which factors contribute to successful AES outcomes. Here, we resurveyed a sample of HLS agreements (surveyed 6-7 years previously), to assess environmental outcomes and in particular change in plant communities over time in relation to AES management. The assessment of change over time allowed the effects of AES management to be quantified against defined objectives, as opposed to drawing conclusions from a single assessment where the conservation value of land entered into an AES can be confounded with AES management effects.

Clear, accessible, objective metrics of species status are critical to communicate the state of biodiversity and to measure progress towards biodiversity targets. However, the population data underpinning current species status metrics is often highly skewed towards particular taxonomic groups such as birds, butterflies and mammals, primarily due to the restricted availability of high quality population data. A synoptic overview of the state of biodiversity requires sampling from a broader range of taxonomic groups. Incorporating data from a wide range of monitoring and analysis methods and considering more than one measure of species status are possible ways to achieve this. Here, we utilise measures of species’ population change and extinction risk to develop three species status metrics, a Categorical Change metric, a Species Index and a Red List metric, and populate them with a wide range of data sources from the UK, covering thousands of species from across taxonomy. The species status metrics reiterate the commonly reported decline in freshwater and terrestrial species’ status in the UK in recent decades and give little evidence that this rate of decline has slowed. The utility of species status metrics is further improved if we can extrapolate beyond the species sampled to infer the status of the community. For the freshwater and terrestrial species status metrics presented here we can do this with some confidence. Nevertheless, despite the range and number of species contributing to the species metrics, significant taxonomic bias remained and we report weighting options that could help control for this. The three metrics developed were used in the State of Nature 2016 report and indications are they reached a large number of audience members. We suggest options to improve the design and communication of these and similar metrics in the future.

In 2016, 21 1km squares recorded in Wales as part of the Countryside Survey of Great Britain were revisited. One hundred and thirty seven quadrats alongside linear features that had all been recorded in the same place in 1990, 1998 and 2007 were re-found and the plant species compositions recorded. Changes in individual species frequency were analysed and the results summarised by a number of ecosystem services and one disservice whose delivery are linked to functionally important species being present. Results indicated a continuation of a trend toward increased shading and woody cover seen between the first Countryside Survey in 1978 and the last in 2007. Most species showed no significant change in frequency suggesting that the significant directional trend seems only to have impacted a subset of the species present. A greater sample size would be required to capture impacts on a larger number of species including a wider range of Common Standards Monitoring (CSM) positive indicator species that may find refuge on the linear network in lowland Wales. Having grouped species by the ecosystem services they help deliver, we found that injurious weeds (an ecosystem disservice to food production) either declined or remained stable, a greater number of butterfly larval food plants decreased than increased and there was a net decline in potential nectar yield. Consistent with the successional trend, increasing species in these service-providing groups tended to be tall or shade-tolerant herbs and tree species. Decreasing species tended to be short, shade-intolerant forbs.

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Agri-environment schemes (AES) are the most significant mechanism to deliver environmental policy within England, and include the new Countryside Stewardship (CS) AES launched in 2016. Previous studies of AES have found mixed evidence for effects on biodiversity, and have largely focussed on responses of wildlife taxa within individual AES options or agreements, with a few assessments of effects at the landscape or national scale where possible. Here, we present the findings of a study to scope approaches to monitoring biodiversity responses to AES at a landscape scale in England, specifically considering impacts beyond farm or agreement boundaries. The objectives of this study were to: 1) Review the evidence for key species groups, focussing on landscape-scale studies where available, to collate information on (i) the strength and type of evidence for responses to AES (ii) field survey techniques, (iii) habitat and landscape variables shown to influence the response of taxa to AES interventions and (iv) existing monitoring schemes that could contribute to landscape-scale AES monitoring. 2) Consult stakeholders on: (i) which species groups to include in the evidence review, (ii) the relevant spatial and temporal scales for monitoring a range of taxa, (iii) appropriate field survey techniques, (iv) the use of volunteers for AES monitoring and (iv) broader comments around landscape-scale monitoring of AES effects. 3) Develop a score for level of AES intervention on potential study units within National Character Areas (NCAs), and test the use of NCAs as landscape units for landscape-scale monitoring. 4) Design a species monitoring strategy, including detailed field survey protocols, a framework to assess AES implementation, estimates of the replication required and indicative costs for landscape-scale monitoring of AES effects. 5) Scope analytical approaches to quantify the relationship between the extent of AES intervention and the responses of taxa at local and land

The Woodland Survey of Great Britain is a unique data set, consisting of a detailed range of ecological measurements at a national scale, covering a time span of 30 years. A set of 103 woods spread across Britain were first surveyed in 1971, which were again surveyed in 2000–2003 (for convenience referred to subsequently as the “2001 survey”). Standardised methods of describing the trees, shrubs, ground flora, soils and general habitats present were used for both sets of surveys. The sample of 1648 plots spread through 103 woodland sites located across Britain makes it probably the most extensive quantitative ecological woodland survey undertaken in Britain; it is also notable for the range of sites that have been revisited after such a long interval. The data set provides a unique opportunity to explore the effects of a range of potential drivers of woodland change that operated between 1971 and 2001. The data set is available in four discrete parts, which have been assigned the following DOIs: doi:10.5285/4d93f9ac-68e3-49cf-8a41-4d02a7ead81a (Kirby et al., 2013b), doi:10.5285/d6409d40-58fe-4fa7-b7c8-71a105b965b4 (Kirby et al., 2013d), doi:10.5285/fb1e474d-456b-42a9- 9a10-a02c35af10d2 (Kirby et al., 2013c), doi:10.5285/2d023ce9-6dbe-4b4f-a0cd-34768e1455ae (Kirby et al., 2013a).

Rare plants are vulnerable to environmental change but easy to over-look during survey. Methods are therefore needed that can provide early warnings of population change and identify potentially suitable vegetation that could support new or previously overlooked populations. We developed an indicator species approach based on quantifying the association between rare plants across their British ecological range and their suite of more common neighbours. We combined quadrat data, targeted on six example species selected from the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland's Threatened Plant Project (TPP), with representative survey data from across Britain. Bayes Theorem was then used to calculate the probability that the rare species would occur given the presence of an associated species that occurred at least once with the rare species in the TPP quadrats. These values can be interpreted as indicators of habitat suitability rather than expectations of species presence. Probability values for each neighbour species are calculated separately and are therefore unaffected by biased recording of other species. The method can still be applied if only a subset of species is recorded, for example, where weaker botanists record a pre-selected subset of more easily identifiable neighbour species. Disadvantages are that the method is constrained by the availability of quadrats currently targeted on rare species and results are influenced by any recording biases associated with existing quadrat data.