New community science monitoring programme launches in the Peak District

SEI is helping the Moors for the Future Partnership with two new surveys just launched as part of a Community Science Project

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the aim of the project is to get local communities and visitors to the Peak District and surrounding areas to collect data over a long period of time to help understand how moorlands and the species they support are responding to climate change. SEI has been involved in developing monitoring protocols and supporting materials for a suite of surveys, the first two of which have just been launched.

We have developed a bumblebee transect survey. Volunteers have received training on survey and identification techniques and have been asked to revisit the same sites over many years to count how many individuals of certain bumblebee species they have seen.

This will help us to assess whether the abundance of certain bumblebee species is changing and whether climate is a factor affecting this. The bumblebee in the picture to the right (photo credit to Andre Karwath, Wikimedia) was first seen in the UK in 2001, is rapidly spreading northwards, perhaps due to climate change

We have also developed a postcard survey of three bird species which people with less time or casual visitors can take part in – they can pick up a postcard from a Visitor Centre with details of the species we are interested in and fill in information about if, when and where they saw these species and post the postcard back or enter the information on the online recording system we have developed.

This will give us information on whether the distribution of species or the timing of events, such as the arrival of migratory species, is changing and whether this in linked to changes in the climate.

For more information about the project, please visit www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/community-science.