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United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: species trends 2015 version 2

Publisher
Environmental Information Data Centre
Updated
30 July 2026
Topic
Not set
Licence
Not set

Summary

This dataset provides linear trends, over varying time periods, for the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) Collated Indices of individual butterfly species across the UK. The main statistical values derived from a linear regression (slope, standard error, P-value) are presented for the entire time series for each species (1976 to 2015), for the last 20 years, and for the last decade. In addition a trend class, based on slope direction and its significance, and a percentage change for that time period are provided to describe the statistical trends. These trend data are provided for 59 UK butterfly species. Trends across different time series allow us to determine the long and short-term trends for individual species. This enables us to focus conservation and research and also to assess species responses to conservation already in place. The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and Butterfly Conservation (BC) are responsible for the calculation and interpretation of this trend datasets. The collection of the underlying UKBMS data is reliant on a large volunteer community. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is funded by a consortium of organisations led by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). This version supersedes the original version due to an error in the precision of the reported figures. This dataset is updated annually and a more recent version of the UKBMS species trends (2016) is now available. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/0383e234-daad-4f0e-8482-c227661f4941

Data links

Link Format Preview Updated
Download the data 30/7/2026
Supporting information ZIP 30/7/2026

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Additional information

Source Metadata
XML, HTML
Date added
24 July 2026
Harvest GUID
0383e234-daad-4f0e-8482-c227661f4941
Extent (Latitude)
60.861° to 49.864°
Extent (Longitude)
-8.648° to 1.768°
Dataset reference date (publication)
2017-11-30
Dataset reference date (creation)
2017-11-20
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Access constraints
If you reuse this data, you should cite: Botham, M., Roy, D., Brereton, T., Middlebrook, I., Randle, Z. (2017). United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: species trends 2015 version 2. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/0383e234-daad-4f0e-8482-c227661f4941
Responsible party
(author, pointOfContact, publisher, custodian)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng