Defining biodiversity change and its role in ecosystem structure, function and resilience

The Biodiversity Programme maintains and enhances CEH’s capability to monitor changes in biodiversity, to undertake survey and experimentation targeting underlying mechanisms and processes, and to develop evidence-based management and mitigation strategies. Priority areas include national surveys to quantify trends in biodiversity, identification of the main drivers of biodiversity change and measuring and predicting the impacts on ecosystem services and human well-being so that we define the link between biodiversity and function. These enable the development of practical and sustainable adaptation and mitigation strategies to conserve and restore biodiversity across biological and physical scales.

Research topics

The science of the Biodiversity Programme is delivered through three interacting Topics:

• BD-1 Observations, patterns and predictions for biodiversity
• BD-2 Ecological processes in the environment
• BD-3 Managing biodiversity and ecosystem services in a changing environment

These Topics concentrate on detecting environmental changes and identifying their causes; quantifying the causes and predicting the impacts of change; and, where possible, developing solutions to minimise the impact of change and enable us to use our environment in a sustainable way. They are integrated with appropriate research areas in the Biogeochemistry and Water Programmes; data-rich projects are further linked by close working with the Environmental Information Data Centre.

For further details, please see the `CEH Delivery Plan'.

Areas of research

Examples of Biodiversity Programme projects include:

• Agri-environment schemes
• Invasive and non-native species
• Biological Records Centre
• Bumblebees
• Changes in butterfly distributions
• Seabird population ecology
• Mimicry of ants by social parasites
• Freshwater microbial ecology
• Gall wasps and their associated parasitoids
• Pathogens and butterfly populations
• Seed dispersal
• Soil science research
• Soil biodiversity and ecosystem function
• Land Cover mapping

Collaborative research

The Biodiversity Programme participates in a wide range of collaborative projects. Some examples include ALTER-Net, DAISIE, FarmCAT, the Genomic Standards Consortium and the UK Energy Research Centre. Please click here for more information.

External support

Research is supported by stakeholders who range from volunteers who submit observations and undertake species recording to agencies and governmental bodies which provide financial support, such as Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Countryside Council for Wales, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the National Biodiversity Network, Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the European Union.