Environmental monitoring at CEH

CEH’s goal is to deliver world-class solutions for today’s most urgent environmental problems, and in so doing achieve its vision of being the world-leading centre for integrated science in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Part of the route to achieving that vision is through long-term monitoring. CEH has a unique capability in terms of different types of data, the length of its datasets and the geographical spread of the data from across the UK.

Downloadable maps

The following series of maps Click to see the full size map of CEH's Air Chemistry monitoring sitesand tables gives an overview of the monitoring sites. They show location, habitat and the main scientific/monitoring questions that are being considered, as well as the approximate age of the site. By design they are summaries - more details on many of the monitoring activities can be found by searching for the appropriate site using the search box in the top right of this page or by contacting CEH Enquiries.

There are six maps and tables divided into the following science areas:

In addition to the sites they also indicate the countrywide networks that are either not site-specific or have too many individual sites to show clearly on a map.

You can also view the full list of monitoring sites. [PDF, 36kb]

 

There are currently more than 180 active monitoring sites across Great Britain where CEH is involved:

  • 88 active lowland sites and 44 upland sites, with 10 which cross this divide
  • 33 freshwater active field sites and 130 terrestrial sites
  • Many broad habitat types are represented – forest and heaths more so than wetlands, coastal areas, linear features and lowland lakes.

Most of these sites are not owned by CEH and the datasets depend on CEH scientists being granted access by the landowners. CEH would like to thank all these landowners for their assistance – without their gracious permission to collect data on their land these datasets would not be as extensive and as useful as they are. Some of the monitoring sites are run directly by CEH, some by CEH on behalf of others, and some by others on behalf of CEH. A significant amount of the monitoring is done by or with the assistance of volunteers – e.g. species recording for the Biological Records Centre, sending dead predatory birds to the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme. CEH expresses its appreciation and thanks to all of the people who have contributed to these datasets.

International links

CEH is also involved in international monitoring networks including the European Long-Term Ecosystem Research network (LTER-Europe) and the International Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER), which describes itself as a "network of networks".

Further information

For further information about the datasets that CEH holds please explore the Data Holdings section of our website or e-mail CEH Enquiries.

Alternatively the Environmental Research Funders' Forum has many useful resources about environmental observation in the UK, including an extensive database of monitoring schemes.