The Understanding the UK environment programme will deliver integrated monitoring, modelling and data for the UK environment. This data will empower researchers, governments and businesses to tackle major environmental challenges of our time.
Understanding the UK environment
What will it achieve?
The programme focuses on four key themes:
- Hydrological extremes: Providing data, models and insights to increase our resilience to floods and droughts.
- Land use and net zero: Measuring how changes in land use impact greenhouse gas emissions, in order to support net-zero goals while protecting natural resources.
- Pollution: Analysing how pollutants affect ecosystems to inform clean air, clean water and sustainable soil strategies.
- Biodiversity: Understanding biodiversity loss on land and in water, and providing monitoring, data and models to support nature restoration.
The overarching ambition is to provide integrated data to study the environment as a whole system.
Discover our datasets
A wide range of long term datasets for air, land, water and biodiversity
News and events
Latest news from the programme and all our events
Data video guides
Find out about our different datasets and where the data can be accessed
Our national role
As a strategic delivery partner for the Natural Environment Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, UKCEH delivers impartial environmental science to benefit the UK research community, governments, businesses, and wider society. Our science infrastructures and national capability programmes enable researchers to observe, experiment, measure, understand and predict environmental processes, inter-connection, status and change.
Together with our extensive reach and expertise, UKCEH science infrastructures and programmes provide un-matched capability to generate independent, robust, high-quality scientific evidence that informs UK and international policy and innovative solutions. The power of these infrastructures and programmes is amplified by our national and international partnerships – working with research, public, private and third-sector partners to tackle UK and global goals and challenges.
Many UKCEH science infrastructures have a combination of characteristics that make them unique in the UK, and often globally. For example, they generate some of the longest, largest and most comprehensive environmental records anywhere in the world, providing critical evidence and leadership for UK and international science, policy and environmental standards.
Long term monitoring projects
Long-term national monitoring is important for assessing the status of the environment and for helping to understand the causes of change. The following projects will be part of our latest National Capability UK programme.
Cosmic-ray soil moisture monitoring network (COSMOS)
Long-term network of soil moisture monitoring sites
National Hydrological Monitoring Programme (NHMP)
Hydrological conditions throughout the UK
National River Flow Archive (NRFA)
Official record of river flow data for the UK
UK Hydrological outlook
Insight into future hydrological conditions across the UK
Land Cover maps
Land cover mapping for the UK
UK GHG flux tower network
Measuring the GHG balance of key ecosystems at sites across the UK
Countryside soil survey
Understanding the state and change of UK topsoil
Heathland Climate Change Experiment (Clocaenog)
Impacts of drought or warming on upland ecosystems and soils
Plynlimon research catchments
River and meteorological data
Cumbrian Lakes monitoring platform
Physical, chemical and biological monitoring
Loch Leven
Physical. chemical and biological monitoring
The Thames Initiative
Chemical and biological monitoring
Auchencorth Moss
Monitoring air quality impact on peatland
Predatory Bird monitoring scheme
Long term monitoring of contaminants
Fish tissue archive
Fish tissue chemical monitoring
Countryside survey (vegetation and plants)
Plant distribution monitoring in the UK
UK Environmental Change Network
Ecosystem monitoring and research
Isle of May Long Term Study
Monitoring for effects of environmental change
Biological Records Centre
Terrestrial and freshwater species recording
UK butterfly monitoring scheme
Monitoring butterfly populations across the UK
National plant monitoring scheme
Surveying wild flowers and habitats across the UK
UK pollinator scheme
Monitoring how insect populations are changing
Non native species
Recording for non-native species
Contact us
To find out more about the programme email nc-uk@ceh.ac.uk