NatureScot Research Report 1351 - Monitoring to deliver healthy ecosystems in Scotland’s protected areas, workshop feedback report, 2023

Published: 2024

Authors: Davidson, L.P., Genney, D.R. and McGrory, S.M.

Cite as: Davidson, L.P., Genney, D.R. and McGrory, S.M. 2024. Monitoring to deliver healthy ecosystems in Scotland’s protected areas, workshop feedback report, 2023. NatureScot Research Report 1351.

Keywords

delivering healthy ecosystems; protected areas; monitoring reform; site condition monitoring; pressures; informing management; spatial scales; features

Background

In the urgent race to halt the loss of nature, our protected areas emerge as crucial players in delivering healthy, diverse, and resilient ecosystems. NatureScot have been monitoring the natural features of protected areas for over two decades through a process called Site Condition Monitoring (SCM). 

In 2020 protected area land monitoring and surveillance at NatureScot was reviewed by a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Committee (Mitchell, et al., 2020). This report found that we currently struggle to monitor all features within each monitoring cycle, and as we implement 30x30 will have to double our monitoring capacity. It is essential that we transform our approach to deliver an efficient and modern monitoring programme that supports timely and effective management. While we recognise and seek to address the inherent weaknesses in our current approach, it is essential we maintain its strengths. 

In response, we initiated the development of an approach that will efficiently facilitate urgent, on-the-ground action and make best use of existing and innovative evidence. We call this approach ‘Monitoring to Deliver Healthy Ecosystems’ (DHE) and proposed a set of guiding principles, which were presented to the SAC (Ross, 2024). To facilitate inclusive and collaborative thinking in the development of this approach, we held a series of workshops with a range of partner and NatureScot teams. Attendees were encouraged to identify both benefits and concerns (challenges) of taking a more holistic approach to monitoring our Protected Areas. This report summarises collective feedback from these sessions and, in response, updates and expands the set of principles.

Main findings

Twenty-six workshops were held with partner and NatureScot stakeholders over the course of eight months during 2023. The purpose of this exercise was to develop the fundamental principles to establish a framework for Monitoring to Deliver Healthy Ecosystems. At the start of the consultation process six key principles had been proposed (Founding Principles 1-6) but, as a result of session feedback, an additional four principles have been added (Additional Principles 7-10). 

Revised Principles for Monitoring to Deliver Healthy Ecosystems:

1. Prioritise management
2. Site-based approach
3. Incorporate the wider landscape
4. Assess attributes on a scale
5. Make best use of existing data
6. Incorporate innovative technology
7. Species monitoring considered in wider context of species-monitoring framework
8. Validated against existing approach
9. Maintain ecological expertise and skills
10. Improved links with funding mechanisms

How we practically implement these Principles across protected areas will be fundamental to the next stage of our reform work. This will be explored across three broad ecosystem specialist groups: marine, woodland, and freshwater & wetlands. The results of these working groups will inform a Pilot Phase and will be supported by the co-development of a modern prioritisation, data-integration and analysis platform.

Abbreviations

Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS)

Earth Observation (EO)

Ecosystem Health (EH)

Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)

Environmental Data & Innovative Technologies (EDIT)

Environmental Deoxyribonucleic acid (eDNA)

Monitoring to Deliver Healthy Ecosystems (DHE)

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)

Protected Areas, Innovation & Date (PAID)

Scottish Biodiversity Strategy (SBS)

Scottish Government (SG)

Site Condition Monitoring (SCM)

Water Framework Directive (WFD)

Introduction

Context

In the urgent race to halt the loss of nature, our protected areas emerge as crucial players in delivering healthy, diverse, and resilient ecosystems. Scotland is currently working towards a target for at least 30% of Scotland’s land and seas to be protected for nature by 2030 (Scottish biodiversity strategy to 2045). 

We have been monitoring the natural features of our protected areas for over two decades through a process called Site Condition Monitoring (SCM). The programme is an essential tool that informs much of NatureScot’s work. For example, it:

• informs our responses to statutory planning consultations, 
• assessment of Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS) applications, 
• guides when and how we enter into Management Agreements, 
• contributes to our statutory international reporting obligations, and 
• provides vital evidence on the state of Scotland’s nature, and the pressures acting on it, to guide our management advice and policies. 

The programme also forms the basis of our annual Official Statistic report on protected areas (NatureScot, 2023), which translates into the Scottish Government’s National Performance Indicator on protected areas (Scottish Government, 2023).

Currently, 76% of natural features are in favourable or improving condition, but this figure is declining. There are many well documented reasons for this decline, so we must ensure our approach to monitoring helps halt and reverse this trend. We currently struggle to monitor all features within each monitoring cycle, and as we implement 30x30 will have to double our monitoring capacity. It is essential that we transform our approach to deliver an efficient and modern monitoring programme that supports timely and effective management. With this in mind, while we recognise and seek to address the inherent weaknesses in our current approach, it is essential we maintain its strengths.

Background

Since 1999, NatureScot and partners have monitored the status of more than 5,000 individual natural features of special interest hosted on Scotland’s protected areas, on a rolling basis, through our Site Condition Monitoring (SCM) programme.

In 2014 an expert panel of externals, set up by NatureScot (then Scottish Natural Heritage), reviewed how the role and purpose of Scotland’s network of protected areas for nature might be developed. The focus was on how to better secure public benefits in the context of wider thinking on land use and ecosystem services. Protected Areas for Nature Review - Panel Report.

Further discussion with partners concluded:

• The monitoring programme was not making best use of resources because every natural feature was treated in a similar way, irrespective of its sensitivity or vulnerability.
• Site Condition Monitoring is largely carried out in isolation from other habitat and surveillance work. This makes it difficult to get a clear picture of the overall health of Scotland's nature.
• Site Condition Monitoring focusses on individual natural features and their condition but provides little insight into interaction between natural features or the other habitats and species populations that occupy a protected area. 

Consequently, to help NatureScot shape its monitoring and surveillance programme going forward, a Sub-Group of NatureScot’s Scientific Advisory Committee was commissioned to investigate current issues with the wider monitoring and surveillance programme and to recommend changes to strengthen it in the future (Mitchell et al., 2020). In relation to protected areas monitoring, the report made three recommendations:

• R1. A ‘3-tiered’ approach to on-land SCM should be implemented in full.
• R2. Ecosystem health needs to be more clearly defined.
• R6. Opportunities for the implementation of new technologies and the involvement of citizen science in monitoring and surveillance should be actively pursued.

However, as the above recommendations were being explored there was also a step-change in the recognised urgency with which Scotland (and the World) needs to respond to the dual climate and nature emergencies. The Scottish Government recently (December 2022) published Scottish biodiversity strategy to 2045: tackling the nature emergency (SBS), which sets out a ‘clear ambition for Scotland to be Nature Positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity across the country by 2045’. It has been made clear that this requires an emergency response. This shift in pace has provided the impetus to further reform our monitoring approach, which aims to bring our recently developed three-tier approach together with the ambition to both deliver healthy ecosystems and service the emergency response. 

This work is informed by recommendations from the co-designed approach to meeting our 30x30 target, specifically Theme 5 of the 30x30 Framework:

• Monitoring should prioritise the identification and assessment of the most important factors for maintaining the health and resilience of 30 by 30 sites while also taking into account gaps in knowledge.
• Monitoring will be designed with stakeholders, and for stakeholders, to ensure it is iterative and informs ongoing and adaptive land management decisions.
• Monitoring will use a combination of traditional methods and emerging technologies, with a focus on maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of data collection and analysis, while also ensuring that data quality and accuracy are maintained.
• Monitoring must meet national and international reporting obligations.

Building on reviews over recent years (see ‘Background’), in 2021 a research and discovery phase was initiated to explore SCM and international applications of the Ecosystem Health approach to protected area monitoring. Reforming our national monitoring program will require substantial work and input from various expertise, therefore we started this initiative by outlining six overarching reform principles (described below) along with our envisioned implementation strategies (Figure 1).

Purpose

A national protected area monitoring programme, such as SCM, has wide ranging applications that will help Scotland meet its biodiversity commitments. Therefore, to facilitate inclusive and collaborative thinking in the re-development of its approach, we held a series of workshops, with various key stakeholders, to introduce the above six principles and prompt open discussion. The process served to confirm and, where necessary, amend these principles. The feedback will also identify additional principles, as required.

Methods

Following the development of the six overarching principles we began an informal consultation phase. The initial series of workshops were opportunistic, opening dialogues with both NatureScot and partner organisations. 

Subsequent sessions were more strategic, identifying and involving pertinent specialist groups that had not yet participated. The workshop, structure and supporting tools were tailored to the session format, averaging between 30 and 60 minutes. Over time, the proposal evolved, leading to later workshops exploring more advanced ideas compared to their earlier counterparts.

Workshop attendees identified strengths and weaknesses of both current SCM processes and the principles of future reform. This was either through noted discussion or online Concept Boards, which were left open for comment for two weeks after each workshop. For analysis and reporting purposes, all comments were collated into a single Microsoft Whiteboard and assigned to each of the six principles where possible. 

Results

The collated discussion notes formed our results, which have been broken down into two distinct sections; 

• The initial principles: Outlines the perceived benefits and concerns expressed by participants directly relating to the six initial principles.
• Other themes: Outlines other comments or more general questions about the proposed reform. 

The initial principles

Principle 1 – Prioritise informing management

Perceived benefits

• A streamlined and less labour-intensive monitoring strategy should facilitate greater engagement between staff and land managers.
• Potential to improve connection between monitoring and management outcomes.
• Potential for increased frequency of data capture, which could deliver faster reporting and management advice turnover.
• Improved links with funding mechanisms and better targeting of funds.

Concerns

• Potential for over-simplification and generalisation of complex environmental pressures and threats.
• Shift away from feature-based approach could adversely affect species-specific monitoring outcomes.
• Unclear labels and boundaries of Action and Response attributes may lead to confusion.

Principle 2 – Site based approach

Perceived benefits

• Increased efficiency by avoiding duplicated monitoring efforts within a site.
• Potential for more sustainable land management and restoration of natural processes.
• Opportunity to simplify the process, especially for large multi-feature sites. E.g. similar to how NatureScot approaches Conservation Advice Packages (CAPs) for Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Area sites (SPA).
• Potential to alleviate the need to bring all features into favourable condition simultaneously, which is currently difficult with conflicting remedies. 

Concerns

• Significant apprehension that shifting from a feature-based approach may result in an incomplete understanding of an individual feature’s performance.
• Potential to diminish the implied importance of certain species, which could have wide-ranging implications on NatureScot functions, e.g. casework.
• Concerns about the impact this proposed monitoring reform would have on the national statistics that rely on Common Standards Monitoring and what the process of changing it would look like to reflect the proposed reform.
• There were numerous comments raising concern that reducing the focus on features could result in the loss of valuable data that is used for multiple purposes beyond SCM, e.g., supporting planning decisions and provision of data to wider species monitoring schemes.
• Risk of not adequately addressing certain feature-types, such as mobile species, stressing the need for deeper exploration of the limitations of this principle.

Principle 3 – Incorporating the wider landscape

Perceived benefits

• Opportunity to tackle pressures at more appropriate scales.
• Incorporating the landscape scale may be more effective for certain features e.g. woodlands or capercaillie.

Concerns

• Apprehension about securing support from surrounding communities.
• Challenges with accessing wider areas of land could potentially extend negotiations and stall progress on the ground.
• Compromising our most valuable sites by overextending the area of consideration 
• Penalising landowners for factors outside their control, advising against the ‘one out – all out’ mechanism used in the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
• Potentially restricted by a current lack of understanding of the precise applications of earth observation techniques, also noting the significant resources that would be required for the supporting infrastructure and validation required to make use of these techniques.

Principle 4 – Assess Metrics on a Scale

Perceived benefits 

• Visualising and communicating results through EPC-styled graphics could enhance the accessibility and understanding of monitoring results to a more diverse audience thereby making it easier to achieve desired results.

Concerns 

• Moving away from binary pass/fail approach to targets may confuse key messages and result in unintended consequences, such as hindering positive action or impacting funding decisions. The WFD ‘one out – all out’ mechanism is cautioned against.

Principle 5 – Making best use of existing data 

Perceived benefits 

• Potentially significant benefits of using streamlined and rationalised SCM attributes as the foundation for the reform through maximising data utility, other efficiency gains and developing a more accessible methodology.

Concerns

• Deviating from UK partners could hinder UK level cooperation and reporting.
• Risk that changing a method developed from a rigorous scientific process (e.g. removing an attribute) may result in missing important details, not fully understanding a site/feature and eventually leading to ineffective management advice
• Doubts about the robustness of scaling mechanisms may cast doubt on monitoring results which could impact ability to encourage change and site/feature comparisons. Questions raised around the implications of changing the monitoring approach will have on their work with some unintended consequences e.g., potentially making it easier to remove land protections. There were also questions about the extent of flexibility in domestic and international legislations to accommodate the changes proposed. 

Principle 6 – Incorporating innovative technology

Perceived benefits 

• Potential to significantly improve frequency of data collection and dissemination of information to relevant parties from current 10-year cycle and facilitating an adaptive management framework.
• Advantages of employing remote sensing methods were identified. These include monitoring wildfires and rhododendron spread as well as providing guidance for field sampling.
• Opportunity to incorporate citizen science data, particularly landscape-scale datasets.

Concerns 

• Risk of unintended consequences of not getting the balance right between remote sensing and in-person field assessments such as skills losses, reduced understanding of protected areas, or poorer relationships with land managers due to reduced frequency of interactions.
• Concerns that innovative technology may not decrease workload and further questions raised about staff capacity to monitor 66% more of Scotland’s land in light of the 30x30 target.
• Maintaining data quality and overcoming obstacles from increasing third-party data integration, standardisation of data and API compatibility could be challenging.

Other themes

Ecosystem Health concept/terminology used 

• Concerns were expressed about the general use of the Ecosystem Health concept, particularly regarding its potential to confuse key stakeholders, the alignment with academic understanding, and the need to define a healthy ecosystem endpoint for effective monitoring.
• Concerns about the use of jargon and buzz phrases, with a call for consistent, audience appropriate language for effective communication 

Climate change and transitions 

• Several participants questioned how climate change would be incorporated and managed in this proposal, if and how it would consider function and resilience and how change and transitions would be managed. 

Transparency

• Further questions were raised regarding transparency, the potential for the approach to be contested, and its connection to funding opportunities. E.g., accessing private finance based on score or potentially paying for the monitoring assessment in a similar way as an EPC assessment is done with a standard methodology and licenced practitioners.

Funding and leveraging external funds. 

• Questions raised about the relationship between the proposed scoring/valuing of protected areas and funding opportunities. For example, providing subsidies for better scores, unlocking funding for pressures in adjacent land. 
• Questions raised into whether the proposed reform could unlock funding opportunities beyond the designated site in neighbouring land or in the wider landscape, specifically for addressing landscape-scale pressures and for non-designated habitats to improve connectivity.
• Potential to link the monitoring results to the landowner’s ability to attract private investment. E.g., how will the proposed reform interact with the carbon market.

Discussion 

The proposal to reform the whole process of SCM and establish a system for Monitoring to Deliver Healthy Ecosystems has provoked much discussion.  Responses have demonstrated a wide range of perspectives ranging from strong support for more radical changes, considering the dual emergencies, to significant concerns about the consequences of changing a well-established system.

Most workshop attendees supported the reasons behind the proposed changes. Participants largely accepted that the current system is under-performing, both due to lack of resource to deliver a sufficient amount of monitoring and due to the focus being inappropriate to inform the types of changes urgently needed across Scotland’s suite of Protected Areas. Frequently cited perceived benefits were those relating to efficiency gains and improving management links. Some, however, questioned the necessity for change, putting forth the idea that fully funding SCM would present a more straightforward solution.

Whilst there was widespread agreement of the drivers of change informing this reform, significant concerns arose around elements of how they would be implemented. This underscored that even broadly supportive participants sought assurances that any changes would be executed with great care. It is clear that there are elements of the current process that do work well, and which therefore should be retained. Some commonly voiced concerns were loss of continuity of current data on specific features (especially species) and loss of connectivity between staff and their sites, alongside lower morale due to the perception their work will become more desk-based. A number of concerns related to unavoidable uncertainties at this stage of the process, including the opportunities and limitations of our current and replacement programme management IT platform (currently in development). Nonetheless, these concerns will be valuable as we move forward into the next stage. 

There was general agreement in the initial six principles, with limited challenges to their core values. Nevertheless, constructive feedback prompted slight amendments to these founding principles and the introduction of four additional principles (Figure 3).

Updated principles to reform our national protected area monitoring programme:

1. Prioritise informing management 

   Refocusing our protected area monitoring programme to inform management action, with a sub-sample approach to measuring responses. We suggest this could be done by categorising attributes as either ‘action’ (focused on informing management) or ‘response’ (focused on the state of the feature).

   While the core of this principle remains the same as before, we accept that the terms ‘action’ and ‘response’ attributes may be sub-optimal therefore we are receptive to alternative terminology to improve clarity and precision.

2. Site-based approach 

   Our current approach monitors features in isolation of each other, which can sometimes result in duplicated sampling of similar attributes and conflicting targets. To improve the efficiency we proposed eliminating duplicated sampling by taking a site-based approach, through a rationalisation process to streamline our attributes. 

   Although no changes were made to this principle, concerns were addressed by exploring the possibility of developing multi-level views of the data within the new database (feature, site and scape-level as required) and by introducing Principles 7 and 8.

3. Incorporate the wider landscape/seascape

   Our existing monitoring results demonstrate that the most frequent and impactful pressures frequently act at a landscape/seascape-scale (Annex 1). As such we propose that our new approach should also gather information at a scape-scale to inform our assessment of a site’s health and inform management at the most effective scale.

   The consultation processes affirmed the principle’s relevance with many recognising the opportunities to tackle pressure at more suitable scales. Concerns raised about this issue did not seem to fundamentally challenge the principle, rather, introduced important considerations for careful examination as we proceed into the next stage.

4. Assess attributes on a scale 

   Currently, we employ a simplistic pass/fail system for assigning condition at a feature level. However, moving forward, in light of principles 2 and 3, we will have data at multiple spatial scales. Further work is required to explore how we effectively assess and present monitoring results across spatial scales. 

   This principle has undergone notable revisions. The proposed implementation of this principle through the gradient approach was well-received, in large part due to the accessibility of the EPC-styled graphics. The revision addresses concerns about the robustness of the gradient approach in some circumstances. In addition, we have identified limitations of the approach while there are significant data gaps at some scales. 

5. Make best use of existing data

   SCM is a scientifically sound and robust programme with 20-years of detailed feature assessment. We proposed rationalising our existing attribute set to prioritise those that inform management while, at least in the short/medium term, ensuring our continued ability to meet feature-level reporting requirements. 

   There was significant support to streamline and rationalise existing SCM attributes as the foundation of this approach for the numerous reasons described above. Concerns relating to streamlining and rationalising our current approach are deeply intertwined with the first two principles and have in part been addressed through the inclusion of Principle 8.

6. Incorporate innovative technology

   New monitoring technologies are becoming more accessible due to their increasing maturity and affordability. We therefore explore ways of integrating new data collection methods into our national monitoring programme, where appropriate, e.g., EO, LiDAR, eDNA etc. This may include early adoption of less mature technologies, with the ability to assign confidence levels (qualitatively and quantitatively).

   The value of this Principle was evident in the consultation, emphasising the chance to incorporate scape-scale data and enhance data collection frequency. The concerns revealed important issues for consideration, some of which were addressed through the establishment of Principle 9.

7. Species monitoring considered in wider context of a species-monitoring framework

   We currently monitor species only within protected areas; however, many species populations are determined by larger scale processes. This is often reflected in the scale of regional and national monitoring programmes, with extracts used to inform within-site assessment. 

   This principle explores whether the protected area scale is the most appropriate for all designate species. It has been added in response to the important concern that the DHE approach could have a detrimental impact on species conservation.

8. Validation against current approach

   This principle recognises the risks of rationalising attributes as proposed in the other principles. It emphasises the need for assurance that by primarily monitoring and informing responses to pressures and threats, we are delivering the outcomes of the SBS, i.e. halting the loss of species and delivering functional and resilience ecosystems. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of calibrating the new approach to ensure continuity of the Official Statistic on Protected Areas. 

   A significant number of concerns were raised during the consultation that changing our existing approach, could oversimplify what we know to be complex environmental condition and that deviating from UK partners could hinder UK level cooperation. To address some of these concerns, we have developed a principle to emphasise the need to validate the proposed reform.

9. Maintain ecological expertise and skills

   This principle acknowledges the significance of nurturing in-house ecological skills and emphases the value of site-visits for staff understanding of those sites and the cultivation of relationships with landowners. 

   This principle is borne out as a direct response to some commonly voiced concerns about the loss of connectivity between staff and their sites alongside lower morale due to work being more desk-based. 

10. Improved links with funding mechanisms

    This principle acknowledges that the ability to implement effective management normally requires access to funding. Monitoring can help prioritise funding to support both on-site and wider landscape action. 

What’s next

The project began with an initiation phase where 6 DHE principles were determined. This report concludes the following consultation phase where these principles were tested with a range of stakeholders, the results of which are presented in this report.

The project will continue to be developed and tested iteratively. We are now in a feasibility phase to explore practical implementation of the ten principles. This work will initially be led by three ecosystem-themed working groups:

• Freshwater & wetland, 
• Marine, 
• Woodland

The groups will, at least initially, be led by NatureScot habitat and species leads/specialists who will co-opt wider input as required. As this phase progresses we will evaluate the need for additional working groups or engagement with specific advisors for key ecosystems (e.g. grasslands). We welcome input from out-with NatureScot at any stage (contact us at [email protected]). The working groups will report back with their conclusions and recommendations in 2024. We will provide further opportunity for feedback from key stakeholders.

In preparation for a reformed approach to protected area monitoring we are working with innovative technology company ‘Informed Solutions’ (via CivTech 8.5) to develop a new cloud-based service to replace our end-of-life SCM management system, called Informed INSIGHT. A Minimum Viable Product of the Informed INSIGHT is ready for population with historic data ensuring continuity of SCM during the transition phase to DHE. Informed INSIGHT will use a range of innovative approaches, such as AI and Data-Lake methods, that enable us to flexibly evolve our approach in a controlled manner. It will enable us to use data insights to prioritise monitoring, link new and existing data sources to multiple features, and enable analysis and assessment at a range of spatial scales.  We anticipate this service will play a major role in our ability to implement our reformed monitoring approach. Inevitably, the development of the approach and this supporting IT infrastructure must be an iterative process given that the needs for ecosystem health have not yet been fully defined. 

Elements of DHE will be rolled out in phases, after testing, with the first expected in 2025 and additional development, testing and roll-out expected annually thereafter. The full transition to DHE, dependant on successful testing of concepts and approaches, is expected by 2028, although our approach will be continuously reviewed and improved beyond this date.

References

Mitchell, R.J., Blake, D., Boulcott, P., Pearce-Higgins, J., Nisbet, A., Scott, B., Wilson, J., Woodin, S., and Eardley, B. 2020.  Report to the Scientific Advisory Committee by the Sub-group reviewing on land monitoring and surveillance by NatureScot. NatureScot, Inverness.

NatureScot, 2023. An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland: The Proportion of Scotland's Protected Sites in Favourable Condition 2023.

Ross, B. 2024. Protected Areas Monitoring Reform. Scientific Advisory Committee 64th Meeting. 18th March 2024. NatureScot.

Scottish Government, 2023. National Indicator Performance: Condition of Protected Nature Sites.