United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: phenology 2024

Published by:
Environmental Information Data Centre
Last updated:
24 December 2025
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
None

Summary

This dataset provides data on the timing of butterfly flight periods for each UK butterfly species across all monitored sites in the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS). Annual data from over 2,500 sites are presented relating to the timing (first appearance, last appearance, date of peak abundance and mean flight date) and the duration (total number of days, standard deviation around the mean flight date) of the flight period for all UK butterfly species from 1976 to the year in the name of this dataset. Phenology change is a widely used measure of the biological impacts of climate change because of the close relationship between temperature and the timing of biological events. This dataset provides an invaluable tool for assessing the impacts of climate change both spatially and temporally. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is organized and funded by Butterfly Conservation (BC), the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). The UKBMS is indebted to all volunteers who contribute data to the scheme. This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme delivering National Capability. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/b9d237fc-5a79-4449-bcee-34c52d87608f

More from this publisher

All datasets from Environmental Information Data Centre

Search

Data links

Link to the data Format File added Data preview
Supporting information ZIP 24 December 2025 Not available
Download the data N/A 24 December 2025 Not available

Additional information

View additional metadata
Added to data.gov.uk
2025-12-19
Access contraints
Contains UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) data © copyright and database right Butterfly Conservation, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, British Trust for Ornithology, and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
Harvest GUID
b9d237fc-5a79-4449-bcee-34c52d87608f
Extent
Latitude: 60.861° to °
Longitude: -8.648° to 1.768°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
2025-12-17 (publication)
Frequency of update
Responsible party
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (author, owner); Butterfly Conservation (author, owner); British Trust for Ornithology (author, owner); Joint Nature Conservation Committee (owner); (pointOfContact, custodian, publisher)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

Contact

Enquiries

Contact Environmental Information Data Centre regarding this dataset

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiry service Freedom of information requests for this dataset