Category
Wildlife monitoring schemes
Capabilities
PoMS provides leadership, coordination, expert support and underlying infrastructure to enable volunteer surveyors to identify and record insect pollinator species distributions and abundance. PoMs has two main surveys: (1) Flower-Insect Timed Count (FIT Count), which includes a mobile app that enables volunteers to enter their data while on-site; and (2) Systematic 1km square surveys using pan-traps. A total of 75 one-kilometre squares are covered throughout the UK.
Lifecycle
PoMs was established in 2017 to provide annual surveys of pollinating insects, with some data from 2015 during a pilot phase.
Uniqueness
PoMS is the only scheme in the world generating systematic data on the abundance of bees, hoverflies and other flower-visiting insects at a national scale. Together with long-term occurrence records collated by the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society and Hoverfly Recording Scheme, these data will form an invaluable resource from which to measure trends in pollinator populations and target conservation efforts.
Access
PoMS data are published annually through the UKCEH Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC).
Location
The UKCEH contribution to PoMS is co-ordinated from the Biological Records centre at UKCEH Wallingford, and operates across the UK.
Funding sources
PoMS is a collaborative project funded by Defra, JNCC, the Welsh Government, Scottish Government and project partners.
Users
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Users of PoMS include: Defra (experimental UK Biodiversity Indicator); researchers studying pollinating insects.
Last updated
29 November 2022 14:10
