This dataset provides numbers and types of plastic particles extracted from sediment samples of three tributaries of the river Thames: the River Leach, the River Lambourn and The Cut. These rivers are regularly monitored for a range of water quality and biological characteristics as part of the ongoing CEH Thames initiative project. Four sampling sites were selected based on the average percentage of effluent present in the river and population equivalent density to represent scenarios ranging from low sewage input and population equivalent density (Leach and Lanbourn) through an intermediate site (the Cut) to a site with high sewage input and population equivalent density (also in the Cut). The samples were collected between late August and early September 2014. The data provides information on the site characteristics, dry weight of sediment analysed (in grams), number of microplastic particles extracted and characteristics of particles (including shape, colour and polymer type). Types of polymers identified include: polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, nylon and polyester. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/93837492-408f-4349-8dcd-ee833e84e47e

Data are presented from an ozone exposure experiment performed on five African crops. The crops (Beans, cowpea, finger millet, pearl millet and wheat) were exposed to three different levels of ozone in the UK CEH Bangor solardomes. Wheat was grown at UK ambient temperature, whereas the solardomes were heated for the other crops to better mimic tropical conditions. The experiment ran from May 2017 to September 2017. The crop plants were grown from seed in pots in solardomes. The aim of the experiment was to investigate the impact of ozone exposure on the crop yield and plant health. The dataset comprises of manually collected data on plant physiology, biomass and yield. In addition the automatically logged data of ozone concentration and meteorological variables in the solardomes are presented. Plant physiology data is stomatal conductance of individual leaves, measured on an ad-hoc basis. The dataset includes the associated data measured by the equipment (relative humidity, leaf temperature, photosynthetically active radiation). Soil moisture of the pots was always measured at the same time, and chlorophyll content of the measured leaf was usually, but not always, determined at the same time. Yield was determined for each plant, in addition to yield-related metrics including mass per bean and 100 grain weight. For finger millet and pearl millet yield is expressed as weight of seed heads and number of seed heads, rather than explicitly as seed weight. The ozone and meteorological dataset is complete, but with some gap-filling for short periods when the computer was not logging data. The work was carried out as part of the NERC funded SUNRISE project (NE/R000131/1). Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/f38beff1-993f-4785-8a97-1de21e3e19c0

Data comprises patterns of diversity in a below-ground community of microarthropods (mites and collembola), measured during a nutrient (calcium and nitrogen) manipulation experiment, located at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Soil Biodiversity Site in Sourhope, Scotland, UK. Data collected include abundance of microarthropods, and also microbial biomass carbon, soil respiration, wet pH using de-ionised water, soil loss on ignition, dry root biomass, total carbon and nitrogen content of soil and roots and soil moisture content. The data were collected as a component of the NERC Soil Biodiversity Programme, established in 1999 and centred upon the intensive study of a large field experiment located at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (now the James Hutton Institute)'s farm at Sourhope in the Scottish Borders. During this time, the site was monitored to assess changes in aboveground biomass production (productivity), species composition and relative abundance (diversity). Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/fe2ba292-08b0-428c-8e27-8c851a4a8bbc

Hydrologically corrected digital terrain model (DTM) of Plynlimon catchments. The DTM was derived from digitised elevation data from scanned topographic maps.

This dataset contains concentrations of dissolved organic carbon, inorganic carbon, CO2, CH4 and N2O in the Black Burn stream which drains Auchencorth Moss peatland in South East Scotland. Concentrations and fluxes have been measured within the Black Burn on an approximately weekly to fortnightly basis from approximately 2006 to present (see https://doi.org/10.5285/3f0820a7-a8c8-4dd7-a058-8db79ba9c7fe). Concentrations in this dataset are from a series of new sites, upstream of the long-term sampling record, adjacent to an area of drains blocked by Scottish Natural Heritage. Measurements began during the drain blocking. Data was collected initially as part of a masters project for University of Edinburgh through Scotland's Rural College and continued by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/88ffbf44-0ec0-41d6-9814-04bc3535cd84

General soil chemical, physical and microbial properties are presented for soil samples at six depths collected from a field experiment in the Conwy catchment. Samples were collected in May 2015. Core samples were taken along three transects by trained members of staff the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Bangor University. General soil chemical, physical and microbial properties were measured at six depths by trained members of staff, using recognised procedures at the laboratories of the School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University. The samples were taken to provide supporting information for assessing the relationship between soil microbial populations and soil properties. The data were collected for the NERC project 'The Multi-Scale Response of Water quality, Biodiversity and Carbon Sequestration to Coupled Macronutrient Cycling from Source to Sea' (NE/J011991/1). The project is also referred to as Turf2Surf. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/f7b2beaa-08cf-48db-9b07-c55118d11506

This dataset contains a colony performance indicator monitored from Bumblebee colonies of similar mass after 43-48 days in the field. The weight in milligrams (mg) is given of each surviving bee recorded as it was removed from the outside of the nest as we progressed towards the nest core. Bumblebee colonies of similar mass were provided with sugar syrup (UT, n=12), containing chlorpyrifos (CP, 150 nanomolar nM, n=6) imidacloprid (IMD, 10 nM, n= 6) or both (IMD + CP, n=12). No pollen was provided and bees were free to forage in a wilderness/grassland area in the west of Scotland. The data were collected as part of a project within the UK Insect Pollinators Initiative (2010-2015). Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/341414f8-e88a-43e5-ade3-c30623c1586d

A range of hydraulics data including stages and discharges were collected for the River and Leat at Boxford between 01/04/2008 and 30/09/2014. The River Lambourn is a tributary of the River Thames, the principal river in the south-east of England. The CEH River Lambourn Observatory comprises a 600 m reach of river and 24 acres of associated water meadows at Boxford, Berkshire. Data include: 1. River flow gauging using Electro-magnetic Current Meter (ECM); 2. Leat flow gauging using Electro-magnetic Current Meter (ECM); 3. River flow gauging using Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP); 4. River stage boards readings (11 Stage boards); 5. Leat stage boards readings (6 Stage boards); 6. River stage at water quality station (WQS) using Druck PDCR 1830 Submersible Pressure Transducer; 7. River stage at four stilling wells using SWS Technology Mini-Diver® Non-Vented Level Sensors with a built-in internal data logger (4 locations); 8. Time series river discharges at Boxford which are calculated from the relationship obtained between discharge measurements taken monthly at Boxford using ADCP and total river discharges at Shaw gauging station; 9. Time series of the Leat discharges which are calculated from the relationship obtained between discharge measurements taken monthly at the Leat inlet and stage measurements at the water quality station. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/4ed6f721-b23b-454e-b185-02ba54d551f0

Data presented here include imagery with ground-sampling distances of 3 cm and 7 cm for March 2019, May 2019 and July 2019. Also included are the corresponding ground-truth training and verification data presented as shapefiles, as well as the classification output and other data relevant to the project such as the width of floral units. The imagery was acquired by Spectrum Aviation using A6D-100c (50mm) Hasselblad cameras with bayer filters, mounted on a Sky Arrow 650 manned aircraft. Ground-truth data for training maximum likelihood classifications and for verifying the accuracy of classifications were gathered within eight days of imagery acquisition. Ground-truth data were acquired from sown field margins and hedgerow surrounding one study field. This dataset was acquired from March to July 2019 at a farm in Northamptonshire, UK. Data were acquired as part of a NERC funded iCASE PhD studentship (NERC grant NE/N014472/1) based at the University of East Anglia and in collaboration with Hutchinsons Ltd. The aim of the research was to map the floral units of five nectar-rich flowering plant species using very high resolution multispectral imagery. Each species constitutes an important food resource for pollinators. The plant species in question were Prunus spinosa, Crataegus monogyna, Silene dioica, Centaurea nigra and Rubus fruticosus. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/cf68be0c-e969-4190-8ec6-abeedb51b42c

[THIS DATASET HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN]. Site indices, as a relative measure of the actual population size, for UK butterfly species calculated from data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS). Site indices are a relative rather than an absolute measure of the size of a population, and have been shown to relate closely to other, more intensive, measures of population size such as mark, release, recapture (MRR) methods. The site index can be thought of as a relative measure of the actual population size, being a more or less constant proportion of the number of butterflies present. The proportion seen is likely to vary according to species; some butterfly species are more conspicuous and thus more easily detected, whereas others are much less easy to see. Site indices are only calculated at sites with sufficient monitoring visits throughout the season, or for targeted reduced effort surveys (timed observations, larval web counts and egg counts) where counts are generally obtained as close to the peak of the flight period as possible and are subsequently adjusted for the time of year and size of the site (area of suitable habitat type for a given species). Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS) sites are thus excluded because they are based on very few visits from which accurate indices of abundance cannot currently be calculated. For transect sites a statistical model (a General Additive Model, 'GAM') is used to impute missing values and to calculate a site index. Each year most transect sites (over 90%) produce an index for at least one species and in recent years site indices are calculated for almost 1,500 sites across the UK. Site indices are subsequently collated to contribute to the overall 'Collated Index' for each species, which are relative measures of the abundance of each species across a geographical area, for example, across the whole UK or at country level in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Individual site indices are important in informing conservation management as not all sites show the same patterns for each species and likely reflect a combination of local climate and habitat management at the site. Although the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and Butterfly Conservation (BC) are responsible for the calculation and interpretation of site indices, the collection of the data used in its creation is ultimately reliant on a large volunteer community. The UKBMS is run by BC, the CEH and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), in partnership with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), and supported and steered by Forestry Commission (FC), Natural England (NE), Natural Resources Wales (NRW), Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). The UKBMS is indebted to all volunteers who contribute data to the scheme. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/cec0fd19-688b-4e3e-8332-cf6506bb4612