Abstract
Volunteer-based plant monitoring in the UK has focused mainly on distribution mapping; there has been less emphasis on the collection of data on plant communities and habitats. Abundance data provide different insights into ecological pattern and allow for more powerful inference when considering environmental change. Abundance monitoring for other groups of organisms is well-established in the UK, e.g. for birds and butterflies, and conservation agencies have long desired comparable schemes for plants. We describe a new citizen science scheme for the UK (the ‘National Plant Monitoring Scheme’; NPMS), with the primary aim of monitoring the abundance of plants at small scales. Scheme development emphasised volunteer flexibility through scheme co-creation and feedback, whilst retaining a rigorous approach to design. Sampling frameworks, target habitats and species, field methods and power are all described. We also evaluate several outcomes of the scheme design process, including: (i) landscape-context bias in the first two years of the scheme; (ii) the ability of different sets of indicator species to capture the main ecological gradients of UK vegetation; and, (iii) species richness bias in returns relative to a professional survey. Survey rates have been promising (over 60% of squares released have been surveyed), although upland squares are under-represented. Ecological gradients present in an ordination of an independent, unbiased, national survey were well-represented by NPMS indicator species, although further filtering to an entry-level set of easily identifiable species degraded signal in an ordination axis representing succession and disturbance. Comparison with another professional survey indicated that different biases might be present at different levels of participation within the scheme. Understanding the strengths and limitations of the NPMS will guide development, increase trust in outputs, and direct efforts for maintaining volunteer interest, as well as providing a set of ideas for other countries to experiment with.
Highlights
Vascular plants are one of the most important indicators of the health of the environment, providing vital benefits to other taxonomic groups such as pollinators, granivorous and phytophagous invertebrates, as well as numerous other ecosystem services [1]
We describe a new citizen science scheme for the United Kingdom (UK), with the primary aim of monitoring the abundance of plants at small scales
Within 100 × 100 km areas of the British grid (‘regions’), including those extended to cover Northern Ireland, a binomial generalised additive model of the effect of average human population density in the year 2000 [77] on the proportion of monads allocated out of the total number released was significant (z = 3.44, P < 0.001; no overdispersion detected); this model included a smooth term on latitude and longitude to account for spatial autocorrelation, which was found to be present in a model without a spatial term
Summary
Vascular plants are one of the most important indicators of the health of the environment, providing vital benefits to other taxonomic groups such as pollinators, granivorous and phytophagous invertebrates, as well as numerous other ecosystem services [1]. Due to the efforts of thousands of amateur and professional plant recorders, more is known about the vascular plant flora of the United Kingdom (UK) than probably any other country This information has come mainly from the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) who collate data from ‘opportunistic’ surveys of plants made by volunteers [2]. The results have been widely publicised, increasing awareness of and participation in the schemes, as well as providing environmental policy-makers and practitioners with the information needed to inform decision-making, policy and land management [26] and allowing the derivation of national biodiversity indicators [27] These long-term monitoring datasets have been routinely used by researchers to explore both fundamental and applied ecological questions [28,29]
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