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Working towards a plant quadrat data repository for Britain and Ireland

Authors:

Abstract

Although a lot of plant quadrat data are collected by ecologists in Britain and Ireland, the community lacks a online repository in which to permanently store data. Such a tool would increase data sharing, improve our knowledge of vegetation and how it might be changing, and allow for future updates to national vegetation classifications.
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Issue 112 | June 2021
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Invasive Species
Feature
Oli L. Pescott
UK Centre for Ecology
& Hydrology
David Morris
MCIEEM
Jacobs
David B. Roy
UK Centre for Ecology
& Hydrology
Keywords: vegetation, plant
communities, quadrats, plots,
database
Although a lot of plant
quadrat data are collected
by ecologists in Britain and
Ireland, the community lacks
a online repository in which
to permanently store data.
Such a tool would increase
data sharing, improve our
knowledge of vegetation and
how it might be changing,
and allow for future updates
to national vegetation
classifications.
Plant ecologists in Britain and Ireland
have a long history of surveying
vegetation using quadrats of one type
or another (Sheail 1987), yet, compared
to more general biological recording,
there have been few attempts to
provide the ecological community
with a general solution to the online
collection and databasing of such data.
Plot-based data are a key source of
information about spatial and temporal
trends in habitats and vegetation,
from the scale of countries to that of
individual sites, and are used routinely
by ecological consultants and others to
sample vegetation, understand its value
and investigate its responses to the
physical environment and conservation
management. While in Britain the
National Vegetation Classification
(NVC) project was at the vanguard of
the large-scale collection and analysis
of phytosociological data (Rodwell
2006), the vast majority of plot data
collected over the decades since the
NVC surveys are not openly available;
indeed, there is no doubt that much
Working Towards
a Plant Quadrat
Data Repository
for Britain
and Ireland
Institute Update
49
June 2021 | Issue 112 |
Institute Update
The tool is aimed
at all collectors of
vegetation data, and we
hope that researchers and
land managers will use
the site to make historic
quadrat data more widely
available.
The ecological
community lacks a
online repository in which
to permanently store
quadrat data.
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About the Authors
Oli Pescott is a Plant Ecologist at the UK Centre
for Ecology & Hydrology, where he mainly works
on the analysis of biological records and helps
to run the National Plant Monitoring Scheme
(www.npms.org.uk). He is the British Bryological
Society recorder for Oxfordshire, and sits on the
BSBI Science and Data Committee.
Contact Oli at: olipes@nerc.ac.uk
David Morris MCIEEM is a Principal Ecologist
at Jacobs specialising in botanical and habitat
survey and assessment, is BSBI vice-county
recorder for Oxfordshire and sits on the CIEEM
Professional Standards Committee.
David Roy is the Head of the Biological Records
Centre (www.brc.ac.uk) at the UK Centre for
Ecology & Hydrology.
--------
References
CIEEM (2019). Code of Professional Conduct.
Available at https://cieem.net/resource/code-of-
conduct/. Accessed 16 April 2021.
National Biodiversity Data Centre (n.d.) ERICA.
Available at www.biodiversityireland.ie/projects/
national-vegetation-database/irish-vegetation-
classification/erica/. Accessed 16 April 2021.
Rodwell, J.S. (2006). National Vegetation
Classification: User’s Handbook. Joint Nature
Conservation Committee, Peterborough.
Sheail, J. (1987). Seventy-five Years in Ecology:
The British Ecological Society. Blackwell Scientific
Publications, Oxford.
is completely lost to science. As an
organisation that values environmental
data and promotes data sharing in its
code of conduct for members (CIEEM
2019), this is a situation which CIEEM
should be concerned about. We also
note that much has changed since the
NVC was first published, in terms of
both analytical approaches and the
environment itself. The Republic of
Ireland has responded to this situation
with a modern vegetation classification
of its own, the Irish Vegetation
Classification, with an associated online
analytical platform, ERICA (National
Biodiversity Data Centre, n.d.), whereas
we are not aware of similar initiatives
for Britain. Increasing the sharing of
new vegetation data, which are already
being collected for other purposes,
would make updates to the British NVC
a more realistic prospect.
The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
has been working to develop a general,
freely available, web-based tool to
rectify this situation. This website will
allow for existing quadrat data to be
uploaded via a spreadsheet importer,
as well as allowing for the interactive
creation of plot locations and associated
samples. The site will be based on
the Indicia toolkit (www.indicia.org.
uk), which underlies popular general
recording sites such as iRecord (www.
brc.ac.uk/irecord), meaning that much
existing functionality can be reused,
including options to publish sample data
to the National Biodiversity Network
(nbnatlas.org) and Global Biodiversity
Information Facility (www.gbif.org),
and we will have the ability to cover
associated issues such as the choice of
appropriate Creative Commons licenses
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/)
for users’ data. The tool is ultimately
aimed at all collectors of vegetation
data, not just ecological consultants,
and we are hoping that researchers
and land managers will use the site to
make historic quadrat data more widely
available. While we appreciate that it
is perhaps only a minority of ecological
professionals collecting vegetation data
using quadrats or other types of plots,
we hope that it will nonetheless prove a
useful tool to those working in this area.
Saltmarsh, Blakeney, Norfolk.
A beta version of this site was launched
in May 2021, and potential CIEEM
users interested in using such a tool to
easily store and share quadrat data are
welcome to get in touch with the first
author of this article to engage with the
project as beta testers. Although phase
one of the project focuses on web-based
collection, storage and open publishing
of data, we also aim to acquire funding
for a linked field app, and analytical
options, in the future. We will aim to
publish information in future issues of In
Practice as the project develops.
50 | Issue 112 | June 2021
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