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Spatial and temporal representativeness of species occurrence data collected between 1970 and 2015 in the United Kingdom 2024

Abstract

Every year, volunteer naturalists search for animals and plants across the United Kingdom (UK) and document what they see. The resultant data – that is, species occurrence records – are vast in quantity but biased towards specific locations, times and taxa. These “sampling biases” can cause problems when one intends to draw inferences about species’ distributions from the data.

In this report, we assess spatial and temporal biases in species occurrence data for 23 taxonomic groups collected between 1970 and 2015 in the UK.

The data considered here are currently used to estimate trends in species’ distributions; these trends are then used to derive national biodiversity indicators. Our results show that the resultant trends are not nationally representative. We also find some evidence that the spatial coverage of sampling has changed over time, the implications of which are less clear. We briefly review possible approaches to deal with these biases and to understand what effects they might have on trend estimates.

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Resource type Publication

Topic category Environment

Reference date 2024·10·01

Citation
Boyd, R., Isaac, N., Allen, D. & Pocock, M. 2024. Spatial and temporal representativeness of species occurrence data collected between 1970 and 2015 in the United Kingdom. JNCC Report 785, JNCC, Peterborough, ISSN 0963-8091.

Lineage
This work was supported by the Terrestrial Surveillance Development and Analysis Partnership, comprised of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, British Trust for Ornithology, and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

Responsible organisation
Communications, JNCC publisher

Limitations on public access No limitations

Use constraints Available under the Open Government Licence 3.0

Metadata date 2024·11·12

Metadata point of contact
Communications, JNCC

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