Drivers and Repercussions of UK Insect Declines (DRUID)
Lead Research Organisation:
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Department Name: Biodiversity (Wallingford)
Abstract
Due to their vast numbers and diversity, insects dominate natural ecosystems and processes. Wholesale insect declines could have profound consequences. Yet despite growing public concern about a possible "insect Armageddon," evidence of widespread insect declines remains fragmentary, even in the UK (arguably one of the best studied countries on Earth); nor do we understand the value that insects provide for wider society. A far stronger evidence-base is required to provide a secure basis for policy, to devise methods to reverse insect declines and protect the roles that insects play in multiple ecosystem services.
We have assembled four of the UK's leading insect dynamics research teams to assess the causes, consequences and potential remedies of insect declines. We will combine data from standardised insect monitoring programmes of a wide range of taxa, modelled outputs of biodiversity databases, and novel assays using weather radar signals to assess shifts in insect abundance, diversity, functional composition and biomass in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems across Britain. Species-level trend data will be assessed relative to a range of potential driver variables and species' traits in an overarching synthesis of decline patterns across taxa and environments. The team has unrivalled access to the latest UK datasets and modelling developments covering insects and environmental drivers down to 1-km resolution or finer, through a wide range of on-going environmental research projects and collaborating partner organisations. Our results will be used to inform mechanistic models to predict the dynamics of insect species and functional-groups across the UK in space and time. Functional consequences of insect declines will be assessed, with particular focus on trophic roles as prey in aerial (bird/bat) and aquatic (fish) systems, pollination and pest control functions, and in nutrient transport between freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. How alterations in insect communities are linked to economic and cultural values will be assessed through a review of existing studies, augmented with participatory valuation approaches for ecosystem services that are poorly studied, such as cultural services. The population, community and functional models developed above will be applied to a diverse set of contrasting future climate, land-use and policy scenarios, to predict insect dynamics with and without specific mitigation measures. Both scenarios and mitigation options will be co-designed together with relevant stakeholders and linked to existing climate scenarios and planned agri-environmental schemes. Consequences of recent past, current and future scenarios for human welfare and natural capital will be estimated, using stakeholder-based valuations. Our novel, integrated approach will guarantee high quality and high impact research outputs, which will be widely disseminated to the scientific and stakeholder communities, and the general public. By engaging relevant policy and decision-makers at an early stage of the project, results will be tailored and directly relevant to on-going policy development in land management, biodiversity conservation and the implementation of natural capital approaches, maximising the likelihood of substantial impacts on both society and the natural world.
We have assembled four of the UK's leading insect dynamics research teams to assess the causes, consequences and potential remedies of insect declines. We will combine data from standardised insect monitoring programmes of a wide range of taxa, modelled outputs of biodiversity databases, and novel assays using weather radar signals to assess shifts in insect abundance, diversity, functional composition and biomass in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems across Britain. Species-level trend data will be assessed relative to a range of potential driver variables and species' traits in an overarching synthesis of decline patterns across taxa and environments. The team has unrivalled access to the latest UK datasets and modelling developments covering insects and environmental drivers down to 1-km resolution or finer, through a wide range of on-going environmental research projects and collaborating partner organisations. Our results will be used to inform mechanistic models to predict the dynamics of insect species and functional-groups across the UK in space and time. Functional consequences of insect declines will be assessed, with particular focus on trophic roles as prey in aerial (bird/bat) and aquatic (fish) systems, pollination and pest control functions, and in nutrient transport between freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. How alterations in insect communities are linked to economic and cultural values will be assessed through a review of existing studies, augmented with participatory valuation approaches for ecosystem services that are poorly studied, such as cultural services. The population, community and functional models developed above will be applied to a diverse set of contrasting future climate, land-use and policy scenarios, to predict insect dynamics with and without specific mitigation measures. Both scenarios and mitigation options will be co-designed together with relevant stakeholders and linked to existing climate scenarios and planned agri-environmental schemes. Consequences of recent past, current and future scenarios for human welfare and natural capital will be estimated, using stakeholder-based valuations. Our novel, integrated approach will guarantee high quality and high impact research outputs, which will be widely disseminated to the scientific and stakeholder communities, and the general public. By engaging relevant policy and decision-makers at an early stage of the project, results will be tailored and directly relevant to on-going policy development in land management, biodiversity conservation and the implementation of natural capital approaches, maximising the likelihood of substantial impacts on both society and the natural world.
Publications
Boyd RJ
(2022)
ROBITT: A tool for assessing the risk-of-bias in studies of temporal trends in ecology.
in Methods in ecology and evolution
Fountain MT
(2023)
Location and Creation of Nest Sites for Ground-Nesting Bees in Apple Orchards.
in Insects
Image M
(2022)
Which interventions contribute most to the net effect of England's agri-environment schemes on pollination services?
in Landscape Ecology
Powell KE
(2023)
Abundance trends for river macroinvertebrates vary across taxa, trophic group and river typology.
in Global change biology
Wilkes M
(2024)
Predicting nature recovery for river restoration planning and ecological assessment: A case study from England, 1991-2042
in River Research and Applications
| Description | We are in the final year of the award, and its findings are coming together well. We are amassing a growing set of results showing positive and negative trends in specific insect species and groups, and responses to key environmental and management drivers. We have compiled datasets covering a wide range of UK insect taxa (including Aquatic bugs; Ants, Bees; Butterflies; Caddisflies; Carabids; Craneflies; Dragonflies and damselflies; Earwigs; Empid & Dolichopodid Flies; Fungus gnats; Grasshoppers and allies; Hoverflies; Ladybirds; Leaf and seed beetles, Longhorn beetles; Mayflies; Moths; Shield bugs; Soldierflies; Stoneflies; Wasps), both from existing recording schemes and from standardised monitoring programs -- including new data from suction trap by-catch. We have run hierarchical occupancy models for the above groups, giving species-specific annual times-series of occupancy (estimating the proportion of occupied UK/GB grid cells from 1970 to 2020+) for 3585 species (of which we were able to extract meaningful trend data for over 1400), providing the most comprehensive update of its kind. The DRUID team at UKCEH have co-led development of a new framework for assessing risk-of-bias in studies of temporal trends (ROBITT). Such assessments are common in many disciplines, notably medical research, but until now have been lacking in ecology. We have developed a Shiny app that was used to facilitate feedback from taxonomic group experts on the annual occupancy outputs and bias assessments described above and their associated trends, which will be part of a forthcoming paper. We have also compiled data on many of the key potential drivers of insect change, and are linking these to local and national insect dynamics. Using novel "Explainable neural net" methods, we have shown strong links between moth occupancy and both climate and habitat -- and in particular woodland cover. Work currently in review, across a wider set of taxa examines how species' traits modulate these trends, with strong effects of body size and generation time emerging. We have developed novel tools for assessing the abundance of airborne insects over wide areas of Britain, using data from weather radar, with a manuscript currently in revision showing both geographical and environmental gradients in their dynamics. We have also begun to make progress towards measuring the impact of insects on ecosystems, demonstrating for example strong links between the abundance of specific caterpillar species and the growth of bird populations. We have developed production function models exploring the monetary value of natural enemies in reducing yield losses of three major crops and delivered a questionnaire to over 1600 people that quantifies the public's willingness to pay for enhancing habitats for bee, wasp and beetle populations. Scenarios depicting both near-future and far-future land-use changes related to key emerging policies under net-zero goals such as Biodiversity Net Gain and Environmental Land Management Schemes have been mapped and related to insect species' modelled abundance and distribution for an initial suite of candidate species. These and other aspects of the work will be completed in the final year of the project. |
| Exploitation Route | This will become clearer during the final months of the project |
| Sectors | Agriculture Food and Drink Environment Government Democracy and Justice |
| Description | Even though our project is not yet completed, it is already having substantial impact. Several key members of the project team (Simon Potts, Claire Carvell, James Bell and our PI William Kunin) were asked to present oral evidence to public hearings of Parliamentary Science Innovation and Technology Committee's hearings on "Insect Declines and UK food Security" in June 2023. These formal hearings have been complemented by large numbers of informal public engagement events, ranging from Defra's Bees Needs Week exhibitions to the Great Yorkshire Show. We have had two meetings with the DRUID Stakeholder Advisory Board, which includes representatives from BASF, Buglife, Butterfly Conservation, Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAFRA), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), The Environment Agency, The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), The National Farmers Union, Natural England, The Northern Ireland Government and The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The first meeting, 2023, helped us identify potential topics and modes of communication for our project outputs (factsheets, policy briefs and videos) with the aim of maximising policy and public impact. The second meeting "UK Insect Futures", 2025, allowed stakeholders to provide feedback on the near- and far-future land use simulations as a basis to co-design emerging project outputs. To date DRUID has produced an aminated video "Are UK insect populations declining, and what's causing the changes? " (with a second planned on future scenarios), drafted two factsheets on trends in insects and values of insects (with three more planned), and planned two policy briefs. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |
| Impact Types | Societal Policy & public services |
| Description | Presentation on trends and bias to UK government (Defra) biodiversity indicator team |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| Description | Testimony to Parliamentary Committee |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | Contribution to Parliamentary review of insect declines and potential links to food security. |
| Title | Improved methods for assessing aerial insect abundance using dual-polarization weather radar |
| Description | We have developed and tested analytical techniques for isolating information on airborne insect abundance and biomass from weather radar outputs. The tool will provide a powerful tool for assessing dynamics of an important facet of insect communities over vast spatial scales and at fine spatial and temporal resolution. We have tested the method against catch from an aerial suction-trap, and found strong correlations. One component of the method was published in 2022, and the full method and validation is described in a paper now submitted to PNAS. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Too early to tell. |
| Title | Species traits, ecological preferences and distribution metrics for 48 species of ladybird considered resident in the United Kingdom |
| Description | This dataset includes compiled information on species traits, ecological preferences and distribution metrics for 48 species of ladybird considered resident in the United Kingdom. Ecological traits including information on morphology, habitat and diet preferences, and phenology as well as information on species distributions, trends in species occupancy over time, and species temperature indices have been determined where possible for each of the 48 species. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2025 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/18cdeee4-38cf-4d15-a141-a99a53e17095 |
| Title | DRUID insect trends |
| Description | An R shiny app (https://gpowney.shinyapps.io/DRUID_trend_viewer/) was developed to share the DRUID trend model outputs (species trends, maps of records, etc) and key risk-of-bias assessment figures with experts. This was part of an expert feedback project, where expert entomologists were asked to review the average pattern of change across all species within their given focal taxonomic group, while also examining species-specific occupancy time-series and trends. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | We are currently collating feedback from the expert entomologists for inclusion in a manuscript describing the trend model outputs. Initial results suggest experts vary in the extent to which they believe current trend model outputs are robust. Aquatic insect groups appear to have the least accurate trends based on the initial expert feedback. |
| URL | https://gpowney.shinyapps.io/DRUID_trend_viewer/ |
| Title | ROBITT tool. |
| Description | ROBITT is a structured tool for assessing the 'Risk-Of-Bias In studies of Temporal Trends in ecology'. It is made up of a set of questions designed to elicit information on the potential for bias in key study domains. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Multiple citations of the ROBITT tool now exist. This is early evidence that researchers are beginning to adopt this tool to improve their analyses. |
| URL | https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2041-210X.13857 |
| Title | wrappeR R package |
| Description | An R package designed to increase the functionality and ease of use of three other R packages (BRCindicators, Sparta & TrendSummaries), which are used to create and summarise species trends from ad hoc occurrence data |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This package plays a key role in the production of standardised trend outputs for the host of insect groups covered by the DRUID project. It was also used to help produce the D1c Pollinating Insect indicator as part of the UK Gov. 2022 UK Biodiversity Indicators (https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/uk-biodiversity-indicators-2022/) |
| URL | https://github.com/BiologicalRecordsCentre/wrappeR |
| Description | "ECOBRIDGE: a knowledge-based expert system to produce high-resolution land cover/land use maps from coarser sources" - virtual talk delivered by Dr Josep Serra Gallego for a session at the British Ecological Society Annual meeting, December 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Future land use scenarios are often generated at coarse spatial resolutions, but modelling their ecological impacts often requires Pner-resolution information on landscape composition and structure. We introduced ECOBRIDGE (Ecology and Biodiversity Integrated Downscale Generation): a knowledge-based expert system partly derived from DRUID WPE research, to produce high-resolution land cover/land use maps from coarser sources. ECOBRIDGE is an open, ArcGIS Pro workflow that draws on expert knowledge defining land use/land cover change to parse a low resolution baseline and scenario, alongside a higher-resolution baseline. ECOBRIDGE also facilitates knowledge transfer from a human-dependent expert system to an Artificial Intelligence framework by packaging the information driving the downscaling process into a deep learning model. ECOBRIDGE offers an efficient, reproducible route to bridging the gap between available low-resolution datasets, and more accurate high-resolution information. The talk sparked questions and follow-up dialogue with academics interested in applying the system. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/bes-annual-meeting-2024/agenda/ |
| Description | "Predicting the impact of real world land-use policies on species abundance and distributions: 30 year simulations with a process-based ecological model" - invited talk delivered by Dr Michael Image for a session at the British Ecological Society Annual meeting 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A session on "Ecological time lags" was accepted for the BES Annual meeting and this work conducted as part of the DRUID project (under WPE) was considered highly relevant to this topic area. A key impact of the science behind our research was the demonstration of the ecological time lags associated with nature restoration and how species recovery in response to Biodiversity Net Gain actions may not follow a linear response. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/bes-annual-meeting-2024/agenda/ |
| Description | "Understanding patterns in long-term insect occurrence data suggests a precautionary approach to estimating trends: expert evidence from 19 UK insect groups" - talk presented at the British Ecological Society Annual meeting, Dec 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Talk given by Dr Claire Carvell (UKCEH) in the session on "Macroecology and Biogeography - Methods, models and theory" at BES 2024. This featured research led by Dr Gary Powney under DRUID WPA that demonstrated the value of a risk-of-bias assessment framework, integrating data-driven bias assessments with expert evaluations to assess a widely used occupancy modelling approach for understanding insect trends. Members of Defra and JNCC biodiversity Indicator and policy teams were present at the talk, as well as academics, and this has sparked follow-on conversations in the context of future Red List and biodiversity indicator assessments. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/bes-annual-meeting-2024/agenda/ |
| Description | Conference Session (BES - time lags) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Emma Gardner co-organised (with University of Birmingham) a thematic session at the British Ecological Society Annual Conference, which took place on 12th December 2024, and involved 6 talks followed by a panel discussion, including questions from the audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/bes-annual-meeting-2024/ |
| Description | ESA Insect monitoring technology workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A workshop on "automated monitoring of insects" -- held at the Ecological Society of America annual meetings in Portland Oregon on 10 August 2023. The review included discussion of the use of AI-based tools for insect monitoring. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Global Biosphere Sensing Network workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Workshop to discuss novel technologies for monitoring natural populations and processes, including visual, acoustic, eDNA and radar-based tools for monitoring insects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Great Yorkshire Show exhibit |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public event, focused on Yorkshire region, with an agricultural slant. Exhibit was about insects, their role as ecosystem service providers, and new methods for monitoring them. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Invited panel member giving oral evidence to the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee on the inquiry into Insect Decline and UK Food Security |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee held a series of oral evidence sessions as part of its inquiry into 'Insect decline and UK food security' in 2023 https://committees.parliament.uk/work/7381/insect-decline-and-uk-food-security/. Having led a written submission to the inquiry by UKCEH, I was invited to be a witness and give evidence at a session at Westminster introducing the topic of insect decline, exploring the gaps in our knowledge and the role of 'Citizen Science', all topics which are covered under our work on the DRUID project. The report from the inquiry is yet to be released. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://committees.parliament.uk/work/7381/insect-decline-and-uk-food-security/ |
| Description | Led a trends, bias and Red Listing workshop for Natural England |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | We (DRUID) led a workshop on trends, bias and Red Listing for 40+ Natural England staff (and numerous external stakeholders). This workshop was designed to help policymakers understand the value of the biodiversity trend outputs being generated by the DRUID project. It was also an opportunity to discuss the importance of risk-of-bias assessments (another tool generated by DRUID) in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of biodiversity trends generated from a range of ecological datasets. The core goal of this workshop was to ensure that trend model outputs from DRUID are used as a line of evidence in the national Red Lists (Bees, Wasps & Ants are an example of this). Effectively helping the UK and devolved nations report on international biodiversity targets and inform ongoing conservation efforts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | NIAB Research Tours at Fruit Focus event 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Two demonstrations given as part of the NIAB Research Tours at Fruit Focus , the industry's premier fruit event, 2022. Primary focus was on surveying pollinators on crops and other flowers using the FIT Count app, but with reference and discussion of the SMOOPS experimental mixtures and results. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Plenary lecture at the NW European IUSSI meeting: 20 years of bumblebee research at UKCEH |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Plenary lecture at the NW European IUSSI meeting: 20 years of bumblebee research at UKCEH |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation (DESNZ) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Emma Gardner gave a brief online presentation on 20th February 2025 about current research to two staff from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, this included research findings from a NERC-funded fellowship, the NERC-funded DRUID project and a Defra-funded project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| Description | Presentation (Defra ELMS Team) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Claire Carvell, John Redhead and Emma Gardner gave talks (covering research under DRUID WPA and WPE) to three members of Defra's Environmental Land Management Team on 4th December 2024 about our research building future land-use scenarios and modelling the impact of land-use interventions on species' abundance, distributions and functional contributions over time, as well as understanding how species abundance/distributions have changed over time. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Presentation (Government Office for Science) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Emma Gardner gave a talk to the Director of the (UK) Government Office for Science on 5th December 2024 about our research modelling the impact of land-use interventions on species' abundance, distributions and functional contributions over time, including research findings from a NERC-funded fellowship, a Defra-funded project and the NERC-funded DRUID project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Presentation (Isles of Scilly) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Emma Gardner gave an invited online presentation on 20th January 2025 of recent research findings from building models that simulate the lives of wild bees to residents of Isles of Scilly and members of the 'Small is Beautiful' Landscape Recovery project, including sharing preliminary model predictions for wild bee activity across the Isles of Scilly and showing examples of pesticide usage maps, whose calculation was supported by DRUID project team members at UKCEH, at the request of talk organisers who wished to know more about how factors potentially affecting bees can be accounted for. It was decided that the bee activity model predictions would subsequently be shared with talk attendees to assist with conservation planning activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| Description | Presentation (NE Statistics Community of Practice) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Emma Gardner gave an invited online presentation on 22nd January 2025 to Natural England staff who are members of the NE Statistics Community of Practice about recent research findings from applying process-based models of how species use landscapes to support integration of local knowledge on species into landscape decision-making processes at local, landscape and national level. The talk included research findings from a NERC-funded fellowship, from co-working with the Landscape Decisions Programme Optimisation Working Group, from partnership working with NGOs and from the NERC-funded DRUID project. Answered questions after the talk and feedback given in the chat by audience members included 'I'm increasingly interested in ways to bring on board expert knowledge to decision making so this is fascinating to hear about' and 'Absolutely amazing that you are centring the eco-centric rather than the current and dominant ego-centric in this approach. We need so much more of this. I am really grateful for your words on this, thank you'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| Description | Presentation of DRUID research on long-term land use scenarios at the UKCEH Strategy Launch event at the Royal Society, London (December 2024) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Josep Serra Gallego presented DRUID research under WPE on fine-resolution long-term land cover scenarios for the UK, via an interactive sand table medium, to attendees at the UKCEH Strategy launch in London. This was a key opportunity to demonstrate UKCEH capabilities to generate future net-zero scenarios for analysis with accompanying data on insect distributions, and to visualise these in an engaging and interactive way with key stakeholders. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Presentation to farmers and practitioners at Lopemede farm |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Talk explaining how DRUID WPE approaches the simulation of future landscape-level landcover changes and how future changes are expected to affect bees, given on 23/01/2024 to a farmer and design companies creating a vision/plan for how Lopemede farm and its businesses will evolve to create a sustainable, biodiverse hub for future generations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Risk-of-bias workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Hosted two workshops where we worked with an international team to develop a risk-of-bias tool for ecology. Risk of bias assessments are common in many disciplines, notably medical research, where they are used to highlight potential bias and the mitigation approaches within the given study. Such assessments tend to be conducted and reported when research is published using potentially biased data. Biodiversity datasets tend to suffer from a range of biases that can inhibit the estimation of robust trends. In these workshops we developed a formalised risk of bias tool 'checklist' for research studies examining temporal trends in biodiversity based on aggregated biodiversity data. The risk-of-bias tool is proposed and described in a paper we submitted to Methods in Ecology & Evolution (Dec 21). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | River macroinvertebrate biodiversity workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We presented our DRUID trends at a workshop focused on the state UK freshwater ecosystems. This resulted in the development of a manuscript summarising the position of UK scientists on national trends over the past 30 years in river macroinvertebrate biodiversity. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Royal Entomological Society Ento'21 meeting talk: E-Planner: a web-based decision support tool for planning environmental enhancement |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk in session on Insect declines - impacts and responses |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Stakeholder Advisory Board meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Meeting of the DRUID project stakeholder Advisory Board, including representatives from Defra, The Environment Agency, the JNCC, Natural England, the NI Government, the RSPB, BugLife, Butterfly Conservation, the NFU and BASF. The meeting was devoted to clarifying key audiences, topics and formats for project outputs to maximise impact. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Talk at the BRC recorders conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A meeting attended by >50 people representing the various UK National Recording Schemes and other stakeholders (for example, UK Govt. orgs.). The meeting is designed to promote discussion of ongoing work in the area of biodiversity science, with a particular focus on the recording scheme datasets and their uses. We presented our recent trends and risk-of-bias work from DRUID. It was an opportunity for us to further engage the recording scheme community with our trend validation project within DRUID. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Talk to the UK Terrestrial Evidence Partnership of Partnerships |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk to the UK Terrestrial Evidence Partnership of Partnerships about the trends and bias work of the DRUID project. Specifically, this talk focused on the expert review section of the research. UKTEPoP's core mission is to foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, enabling its partners to achieve more together than they could individually. Through this approach, UKTEPoP is helping to improve understanding of the UK's natural environment, ensuring that conservation efforts are informed, efficient, and impactful. The goal of our talk was to ensure the DRUID trends and bias research was promoted to this partnership, given the research is critical to ensuring that future work is accurate and that any limitations of existing approaches are explored, mitigated and communicated. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://gpowney.shinyapps.io/DRUID_trend_viewer/ |
| Description | Workshop (DRUID Workshop on Insect Futures) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Ran an online workshop on 24th February 2025 to present and discuss findings from the NERC-funded DRUID project around the potential impacts of future land-use changes on insects with 23 stakeholders. Presentations were given by DRUID team members Richard Pywell, Mike Image, John Redhead and Emma Gardner with Claire Carvell and Simon Potts also supporting the break-out discussion rooms. Feedback from stakeholders included 'Its been interesting to consider how land use changes could affect insect populations' and 'I've valued listening to presentations on the work so far before delving into the workshops'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| Description | Youtube video describing the DRUID project's analysis of insect data sets and some key findings |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | We created a short animation aimed at a general audience to promote the DRUID research and some of our key findings |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y86R_Zxqu8 |