Report from UKEOF Monitoring and Modelling Webinar
The webinar was co-ordinated by Gareth Old (UKEOF Secretariat) to widely disseminate findings of the Monitoring and Modelling workshop held in Birmingham (7th March 2018) and identify next steps. A recording of the webinar (audio and presentation slides) is available.
The webinar, which was attended by 25 people, was chaired by David Roy (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology). In his introduction he explained how our four speakers would summarise key points raised and next steps identified in four breakout discussion groups. David Allen from Natural Resources Wales reported back on integration of monitoring and modelling across common measures (including new techniques such as eDNA). Graeme Cameron from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency reflected on how monitoring and modelling may support decisions and policies and how uncertain data is used. Ben Payne from Natural England considered the importance of there being a common understanding of challenges by environmental managers, modellers and monitoring experts. Finally, Neil Preedy reported back on the risk based approach to monitoring and its implementation. All presenters summarised the next steps that were identified and these were further discussed in an open discussed towards the end of the webinar. David Roy and Gareth Old will review the next steps discussed and provide recommendations to the UKEOF Management Group with regard to possible future activities.
As well as sharing knowledge and identifying next steps, both the workshop and webinar were successful in developing relations between monitoring and modelling communities within UKEOF partner organisations and promoting the value of two way interaction.