UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: Species Trends 2019

58 UK butterfly species have linear trend statistics calculated from annual collated indices. The dataset provides slope, standard error, P-value, and classified trends for three time periods: the full series (starting 1976 for many species), the last 20 years, and the last decade. These metrics enable assessment of long-term and short-term population changes to guide conservation efforts.

Use Cases

• Assessing long-term population decline or recovery based on linear regression slopes for the full time series.
• Evaluating recent conservation impact by analyzing trend classifications for the last decade.
• Comparing short-term versus long-term status changes using separate trend statistics for the last 20 years.
• Prioritizing species for conservation action based on estimated percentage change over specified periods.

Strengths

• Includes data for 58 butterfly species, covering all UK species with sufficient monitoring records.
• Provides trend analysis across three distinct timeframes, enabling multi-temporal assessment.
• Derived from a standardized national monitoring scheme organized by multiple conservation and research institutions.

Limitations

• Column names and exact data structure are not provided in the source metadata.
• The starting year for the time series is later than 1976 for rarer species recorded on fewer than five sites.
• No explicit row count, file size, or license information is available from the sources.

Provenance

Source

UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), organized by Butterfly Conservation, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, British Trust for Ornithology, Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

Collection Method

Trends calculated by linear regression on annual collated indices derived from a log-linear model incorporating site indices from all monitored UK sites.

Time Range

1976 to present (with later starts for some species), plus subsets for the last 20 years and last decade.

Freshness

2026-04-16 10:15:06.142480

Geography

United Kingdom