How the Terrestrial Biodiversity Surveillance Strategy can help you

Funders or organisers of one or more biodiversity surveillance schemes The Strategy will help you to judge the value of your investment. The overview of schemes and analysis of need and coverage provides a ready comparison of the contribution of schemes to the wider framework of evidence generated on the different components of biodiversity. The Strategy also provides practical help in reviewing your surveillance needs consistently, including:
- a Surveillance Hierarchy to identify the appropriate scale for surveillance according to the nature of the question, level of evidence required and scales and nature of impacts; and
- illustrative examples of how the strategy can be used to review coverage for policy areas or taxonomic groups, see Using the Strategy

Participants in a surveillance scheme The overview of schemes gives you some impression of the importance of your work, and tells you about other initiatives you may want to get involved in; the results from some of these schemes, helps you see how your work (and others) is used singly or with other surveillance to give more evidence about drivers and pressures on particular components of biodiversity; whilst the basis of the Surveillance Strategy may help you understand why schemes sometimes change.

Designing or reviewing surveillance schemes The Surveillance Hierarchy helps identify the most appropriate scale for surveillance according to the nature of the question, level of evidence required and scales and nature of impacts. The overview of schemes will help you identify real surveillance gaps to avoid duplication of effort, and possibly allow savings through sharing of sampling locations and analyses. The way in which JNCC reviewed mammal surveillance will also help in understanding how the surveillance strategy can be used in reviewing a scheme.

Policy maker needing information on the impacts of a particular pressure on biodiversity The analysis of need and coverage allows you to see how your needs fit with both the evidence needs for each of the main objectives and assess current coverage whilst the overview of schemes gives you further information on each of the main surveillance and monitoring schemes.

If there isn’t a single scheme addressing what you’re interested in, these documents can help you identify what mix of existing schemes may help give you the evidence you need without setting up a new scheme.