Natural England Commissioned Report NECR203 The state of the UK’s long-term experiments An updated survey by the Ecological Continuity Trust First published 14 December 2015 www.gov.uk/natural -england Foreword Natural England commission a range of reports from external contractors to provide evidence and advice to assist us in delivering our duties. The views in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of Natural England. Background Long-term ecological experiments test the against which to assess change and this has impacts of environmental change or provided the first reliable evidence that the UK is management on biological communities, species rapidly losing a large number of long-term populations and ecosystem processes under ecological experiments. This represents a major field conditions. Experiments compliment long- loss of national capability that will be hard or term monitoring by enabling cause and effect to impossible to replace. There are no easy be identified with confidence, novel approaches solutions to the problem, particularly in a time of to be trialled on small areas and the effects of reducing public expenditure, but this report future changes to be anticipated. They are a points the way to a new partnership approach vital part of the evidence base for decision with the potential to build a more sustainable making in conservation and land management. future for long-term ecological experiments. Many ecological process operate over periods of Natural England will work with partners including decades and longer so ecological experiments the Ecological Continuity Trust to progress this also need to operate over similar timescales if as part of our wider evidence programme. they are to realise their full value. It has however proved difficult to maintain many experiments for This report should be cited as: more than a few years. We commissioned this study to evaluate the extent of this problem, its Ecological Continuity Trust. 2015. The state of causes and possible solutions. We were the UK’s long-term experiments. Natural fortunate in that an earlier study by the England Commissioned Reports, Number 203. Ecological Continuity Trust provided a baseline Natural England Project Manager - Dr Mike Morecroft, Principal Specialist, Climate Change, Natural England, Mail Hub Block B, Whittington Road, Worcester WR5 2LQ [email protected] Contractor - Dr. Jerry Tallowin, Ecological Continuity Trust, Manor House, Little Wittenham, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RA www.ecologicalcontinuitytrust.org/ Keywords - Long-term ecological experiments, evidence, Ecological Continuity Trust, land management, conservation, climate change, environmental change, monitoring, field experiments Further information This report can be downloaded from the Natural England website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/natural-england. For information on Natural England publications contact the Natural England Enquiry Service on 0845 600 3078 or e-mail [email protected]. This report is published by Natural England under the Open Government Licence - OGLv3.0 for public sector information. You are encouraged to use, and reuse, information subject to certain conditions. For details of the licence visit Copyright. Natural England photographs are only available for non commercial purposes. If any other information such as maps or data cannot be used commercially this will be made clear within the report. ISBN 978-1-78354-269-7 © Natural England and other parties 2015 The state of the UK’s long-term experiments An updated survey by the Ecological Continuity Trust on behalf of Natural England Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................ i 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Long-term Experiments ..................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Scope of work ......................................................................................................................... 2 2. Methodology .................................................................................................................... 3 3. Results ................................................................................................................................ 7 3.1 Long-term experiments in 2014 ..................................................................................... 7 3.1.1 Distribution ................................................................................................................................... 7 3.1.2 Experiment types ........................................................................................................................ 8 3.1.3 Age .................................................................................................................................................. 14 3.1.4 Ownership ................................................................................................................................... 15 3.1.5 Data management and archiving ....................................................................................... 15 3.2 Changes since 2008 ............................................................................................................17 3.2.1 Closed experiments ................................................................................................................. 17 3.2.2 New experiments ..................................................................................................................... 18 3.2.3 Cessation of experimental treatments ............................................................................ 18 3.3 Discussion .............................................................................................................................18 3.3.1 Loss of overall UK experimental capacity ...................................................................... 18 3.3.2 Loss of active research at priority sites .......................................................................... 19 3.3.3 Loss of LTEs in experimental diversity ........................................................................... 19 3.3.4 Loss of geographic range ...................................................................................................... 21 4. The Future of Long-term Experiments ................................................................ 22 4.1 Experiments under threat ...............................................................................................22 4.1.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................... 22 4.1.2 Threats.......................................................................................................................................... 22 5 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 27 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 30 APPENDICES ...................................................................................................................... 32 Appendix 1: Summaries of UK LTEs, 2008-2014 ............................................................33 Appendix 2: Assessment criteria ...................................................................................... 120 Appendix 3: Score sheet for UK LTEs, 2008-14 ............................................................ 122 Appendix 4: (i) Example research activity log (Jason Fridley, BCCIL) (ii) Example log of available datasets (R.J. Williams, Denmark Farm) ......................................... 125 Executive Summary Long-term ecological experiments (LTEs) test the effects of different aspects of environmental change or management on ecosystems in realistic field situations over timescales of years or decades. They are essential because many ecological processes operate on these timescales and because the effects of climate change, pollution, development and a range of other factors are long-term. The UK is however at risk of losing this critical component of national capability for ecological research and valuable data collected over many years. There is increasingly wide recognition of the need to take a long-term view of the natural environment and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is developing a 25 year plan for the environment. It is essential to ensure that a long- term approach is also taken to gathering the evidence needed to support policy and management decisions. Long-term ecological experiments are a critical element of this to ensure rigorous assessment is made of the impacts of environmental change and the effectiveness of management. LTEs have however been at increasing risk in the last decade: in 2008, the Ecological Continuity Trust identified 49 long-term ecological experiments, of which 22 were found to be at significant risk. This report, commissioned by Natural England in February 2014 summarises an update to the 2008 survey. The principal objectives of the updated survey were to: 1) Establish the current status and security of the UK’s long-term ecological experiments (LTEs) for users