The National Environmental Monitoring Conference 2 (NEMC) 2025 took place on Monday 15 December at the EICC, Edinburgh. This conference was brought together as a partnership between UKCEH, British Ecological Society (BES) and UK Environmental Observations Network (UKEOF) This was the second annual meeting, bringing together 180 individuals from the UK environmental monitoring community - researchers, policy makers and practitioners to explore how environmental monitoring can drive real change throughout the UK.
Sessions on 'Innovation in monitoring mycorrhiza for Ecosystem assessment' to 'Seldom heard voices in monitoring' were presented from partnerships across organisations such as Natural England, Forest Research, DEFRA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Welsh Government, many UK universities, UKCEH and the National Trust.
Ably chaired by Bridget Emmett (UKCEH) and Ben Ditchburn (DEFRA / UKEOF), the conference was a mixture of talks, conversations, Q&A and online polling.
Overall, the conference was a success with the agenda for a potential NEMC 3 being devised from the feedback of the conference attendees. A number of the session organisers will be organising further meetings and workshops to also build to a future conference in 2026.
The full programme included:
Morning Session – Closing the Gaps
- Monitoring Habitat Type and Condition at Scale – Current Challenges and Opportunities
- Innovation in Monitoring: Mycorrhizas for Ecosystem Assessment
- Considering Seldom Heard Voices in Monitoring Socio-Economic Benefits of the Environment
- Aquatic Greenhouse Gas Fluxes - Success Stories and Future Challenges for Monitoring
Afternoon Session – Vision to Value:
- Embedding New Technologies into National Biodiversity Monitoring Programmes: Collaborative Efforts for Best Practice
- Improving the Environment – How Can We Tell Within Politically-Relevant Timeframes?
- The Evolution and Integration of Monitoring Networks for Quantifying Hydrological Variability - A Foundation for Fostering Resilience to Climate Change
- A proposed national "Soil Health Alert Indicator" for agricultural landscapes
- The System Level Indicator – A Visualisation Tool for Chemical Pollution in the UK
- Innovative and Integrative Digital Research Infrastructure for Environmental Monitoring
- Drone/Camera Remote Sensing for Habitat Monitoring: Are We Nearly There Yet?
- Building a Common Evidence Base to Restore Nature: Co-Developing Scalable Monitoring Approaches Across the UK
- Evaluation & EEDI
- Towards a unified UK Environmental Monitoring Framework