Environmental Monitoring
What is environmental monitoring?
Environmental monitoring serves the critical purpose of assessing and managing environmental quality, compliance with regulations, and protecting the financial investment that underpins and supports your business goals.
By tracking elements such as habitat condition, stocking density and deer numbers for instance, tailored monitoring provides you with crucial information that we can then use to support your agricultural and upland habitat management planning. This approach plays an important role in promoting sustainable resource management whilst aiding in the conservation of your natural capital assets.
An area of increasing importance in meeting Scotlands carbon sequestration goals has been the huge expansion of peatland restoration projects. Appropriate monitoring programmes that conform to the peatland code are essential, and we can offer an extensive suite of solutions that are both cost effective and compliant.
What sort of things are involved in environmental monitoring?
Upland habitat monitoring on peatlands and heaths involves various techniques to assess ecosystem health, biodiversity, and the impact of herbivore activities. Remote sensing technologies, such as satellite imagery and aerial surveys, provide a broad-scale view of vegetation cover, land use changes, and disturbances.
Ground-based methods, include vegetation surveys and herbivore impact surveys offer detailed insights into plant species composition, abundance, and distribution.
We can offer standardised reporting structures based on current accepted practices and we rely extensively on the latest digital technologies. We have custom packages developed alongside KOREC, one of the largest providers of survey equipment in the UK.
Our team are happy to discuss with you the best approach for your needs and we can tailor packages to suit.
How does it work (Estate/ Group level)?
Our team have undertaken surveys over 350,000 hectares of highland habitats in the past 9 years, creating a deep pool of knowledge on Highland habitats.
At estate level we will generally opt for a programme of habitat monitoring that offers an insight into current impacts and long terms trends on your property. We use the same approach that NatureScot uses on designated sites, and this ensures the repeatability and compliance with current standards.
At group level, we can advise deer management groups on the best approach for them, taking into account the most cost-effective methods, and again we have access to specialist data capture and desktop data management.
Both approaches allow us to provide the most up to data habitat condition monitoring reports and of course we can advise on a wide range of options to get the most out of your property.
How can we help?
First and foremost we take the time to listen. We can discuss the implications of management changes, and the most cost effective solutions for you.
We also remain focussed on current governmental policy changes and the likelihood of what that means for both the farming and upland management communities.
Our staff have a wide range of skillsets that can support your wider business goals and we are always on hand to offer ongoing support.