National Capability for UK challenges

Understanding the UK environment

The National Capability for UK Challenges (NC-UK) programme is transforming how the UK understands and manages its land, air, and freshwater environments—delivering the data, tools, and partnerships needed to drive innovation, inform policy, and accelerate progress toward a resilient and sustainable future.

NC-UK is driving innovation across four critical national priorities:

Hydrological extremes – building resilience to floods and droughts
Land use and net zero – supporting emissions reduction and resource protection
Pollution – guiding clean air, freshwater, and soil strategies
Biodiversity – enabling nature recovery through robust data and monitoring

Transforming our science

At the heart of NC-UK are three transformative pillars that shape its mission and amplify its impact:

Co-design and stakeholder engagement

We collaborate with universities, researchers, policymakers, industry leaders, and communities to ensure the programme evolves with the needs of the environmental science sector. This inclusive approach helps us co-create solutions that are relevant, inclusive and impactful.

Digital infrastructure and data science

NC-UK pioneers next-generation digital tools and techniques to unify environmental data across systems. This integrated approach empowers researchers to explore interconnected environmental dynamics—revealing how land, air, and water influence one another

Developing a vision for an integrated environmental monitoring network for the future

We’re developing smarter, more connected ways to observe, measure and monitor the environment. We are developing a network that delivers long-term observations of the terrestrial and freshwater environment fit for the future and focussed on the needs of the user community.

Our national role https://www.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/our-national-role

Latest news and events

National Environmental Monitoring Conference 2025

NEMC 2025 is a one-day event on Monday 15 December 2025 bringing together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to explore how environmental monitoring can drive real-world impact.

Further details about the National Environmental Monitoring Conference

NC-UKs Ellie Mackay and Heather Moorhouse monitoring on Windermere

UKCEH at BES

If you're attending BES 2025, come and visit the UKCEH stand #L3 or attend one of our presentations, workshops or poster sessions.

Read the full article

A map of Downham Market area from the 1960s maps.

Maps created by 1960s schoolchildren provide new insights into habitat losses

A new study of 1960s maps, many of which were created by young people, has provided important fresh evidence of the timing and extent of habitat losses caused by agricultural intensification and urban growth in England and Wales.

Discover our datasets

At UKCEH, we are dedicated stewards of environmental data. Our science infrastructures and long-term monitoring programmes under NC-UK and resulting data, tools and models enable researchers across the UK to understand and predict environmental processes and change. We are committed to managing these datasets for the long term, so they can easily be accessed by all and used to inform environmental research, policy, innovation and conservation efforts around the world.

Find out more about the data from NC-UK

Long term monitoring projects

Long-term national monitoring is important for assessing the status of the environment and for helping to understand the causes of change. The following projects will be part of our latest National Capability UK Challenges (NC-UK) programme.