Quantifying links between human influences on climate, shifting seasons and widespread ecosystem consequences

It has been reported that the time-of-year of many typical indicators of spring, such as egg laying in birds and flowering in plants, has been changing in recent decades. Many of these recurring biological events now happen earlier in the year than they did just a few decades ago. This is believed to be one of the most conspicuous biological impacts of climate change. Far from trivial, these changes could disrupt seasonal relationships between species. This is because different species have changed their seasonal timing to different extents. For example, predators such as some woodland birds may now need to feed their chicks at a time of year at which peaks in their insect food no longer occur, whereas these events may once have coincided. Such changes in the seasonal synchronisation of different species have the potential affect numbers of offspring produced and the survival of populations. A few studies on a small number of species suggest that predators and prey may become de-synchronised because they have different responses to a warming climate but we do not currently know whether this is a general pattern that holds across a large number of species. We also do not currently know how much the observed changes in the timing of spring events has been affected by human-induced climate change, rather than climate change brought about by natural causes. The current project aims to address these gaps in our knowledge by analysing thousands of long-term studies on hundreds of UK plant and animal species and showing whether predatory species have, on average, different responses to climate change compared to their prey and whether these changes are likely to be effects of the human-induced component of climate change. We also aim to establish the regions of the UK, and habitats, in which possible de-synchronisation between predators and prey is most likely by focussing on birds and the insects on which they feed their chicks. This is the first time that so many species from marine, freshwater and dry-land environments have been analysed in a way that allows meaningful comparisons to be made between them, and that allows a statement to be made about the likely significance of human-induced warming for the functioning of a wide range of UK ecosystems.

We will target the academic community via publishing results in peer-reviewed journals and presenting at scientific conferences, but we hope to reach many more potential stakeholders during the course of the project including key international researchers (Prof. Marcel Visser and Dr Toke Hoye). Our proposal will deliver priority science for a number of organisations, who have contributed to the proposal and will take ownership of key elements of the research agenda. The Met Office, Rothamsted Research and the British Trust for Ornithology are key beneficiaries in this respect. In order to maximise the potential impact of our project, we have contacted key UK statutory bodies: SNH (Ian Bainbridge), Natural England (Mike Morecroft) and CCW (Rhian Thomas). We have invited representatives of each of these bodies to our project start-up and closure meetings, so that they can be informed of the scientific rationale behind the project and results. This will allow them to advise us on how to report our science in a way that would best align with their organisational priorities. We will use a project Wiki page, hosted by CEH, to encourage day-to-day discussions between researchers and stakeholders. We have also contacted Peter Costigan in order to discuss the production of a non-technical synthesis of the project findings for Defra, at project closure.
As the current project makes extensive use of data collected by volunteers under schemes co-ordinated by a range of charitable research/conservation organisations, we can communicate the results of our work to the members and volunteer base via published reports or on organisational webpages. We feel that it is important that these volunteers see the scientific benefits of their continued efforts, and that a major societal impact will be that our work will reinforce the utility of "citizen science" for pressing environmental issues. The Woodland Trust have already agreed to such dissemination in principle. It is crucial to engage the general public since the issue of climatic change, particularly the anthropogenic component, as a driver of changes in the "signs of spring" is contentious. Our attribution work aims to address this issue and so our work would represent a valuable tool to engage with public opinion regarding the climate change debate. We propose to make full use of CEH press office contacts in order to communicate our findings to the wider public and encourage debate. We will also use CEH's Twitter page (CEH Science News, http://twitter.com/#!/cehsciencenews) as a mechanism for efficient communication of project results to the general public.