1. Co-ordination with coastal monitoring
Angela Marlow – Senior Advisor for the Southern and South West Coast

2. The South East Regional Coastal Monitoring Programme
Continuous and fixed point typographical beach profiles of shingle beaches for flood and coastal protection
Many of the sites that are surveyed have a number of nature conservation designation – SSSI, SPA, SAC, Ramsar
Assents are in place to ensure that surveys do not impact the interest features of these sites

3. Surveyors
Surveys are collected using GPS kit, attached to either a survey pole (for profiles), a rucksack (for continuous) or a quad bike (for continuous)

4. Proposed changes to the surveys
Dominique Townsend - Coastal Monitoring Canterbury City Council
Review and reduce number of surveys and move timing
Proposed survey window:
Spring: 1st April - 30th June
Autumn: 1st October - 31st November (no change to current schedule)
Breeding bird season

5. Objectives collaboration
1. Achieve an overview agreement with NE on the programme
2. Ensure all sites are being treated accordingly, individual assents are in place where needed
3. Ensure all sites can be surveyed new window
4. Disseminate relative CCO report to NE staff member – explore how data from CCO can be for nature conservation

6. Survey areas
For the purpose of coastal monitoring, the coastline is split into surveying units based on sediment cells
Cell 4 covers between the Isle of Grain to Selsey Bill
Cell 5 covers between Selsey Bill to Portland Bill
Cell 4 - there are 76 units 51 designations – ~ 12 with breeding birds
Cell 5 - there are 132 units 72 designations – ~ 10 with breeding birds

7. Shingle - Conservation interest
Globally restricted few occurrences outside north-west Europe, Japan and New Zealand
Size 2mm - 200mm

8. Conservation interest - shingle
Rare and finite resource (Packham et al 2001)
Geomorphology – spits, barrier beaches, cuspate forelands
Vegetated shingle – plants, lichens and bryophytes supports rare and specialised invertebrates and bird species. (50% UK vegetated shingle located Dungeness and Rye)
Overwintering birds feeding / roosting and breeding

9. Type of impacts
Trampling, disturbance - habitats, geomorphology – shingle ridges/ recurves, and birds (ground-nesting birds)
Shingle - compaction
Keep to existing pathways, avoiding vegetation, ATV drive along the active shingle foreshore (providing this is not chalk platform).
Other sensitive habitats such as saltmarsh
Avoid sensitive times of the year – breeding birds / over-wintering

10. Pagham Harbour spit – geomorphology / vegetated shingle
the average transport rate has been about c 20,000m3/year over the last decade (time of spit growth), while peaking at c 38,000m3/year during 2014 (mostly during the winter storms of ).

11. Dungeness - vegetated shingle and coastal geomorphology
Short haired bumble bee

12. Vegetated Shingle – plant and lichen species

13. Ground nesting - little terns
RSPB who manage the site as a Local Nature Reserve are working to restore the Little Tern's breeding fortunes across the 3 harbours in the area (Pagham, Chichester and Langstone) after a dramatic decline of 86% in breeding numbers in this area since the mid 1980s. This year they announced that the Little Tern, the rarest of the three tern species found here, appear to have fledged a total of at least 35 young from a total of around 70 pairs, with 17 chicks in Chichester Harbour, up to 16 at Pagham Harbour and four at Langstone Harbour. This compares with single figures of chicks fledging in most recent years. For Pagham Harbour this is the best number since 1979 and in Chichester Harbour since the mid 1970s. The little tern numbers are declining across European and this is likely to be due to their vulnerable nesting sites
Uk pop 1,900

14. Little tern – breeding abundance

15. Factors affect breeding success
Beaches, spits and inshore islands
Nest close to feeding grounds shallow water small fish
Vulnerable to disturbance people
Predation
Beach management
Washed out

16. Ground nesting - Ring plovers / Oystercatchers
70 pairs in Sussex ring plover similar number oyster catcher – Pagham holds 14 breeding pairs Uk 5,300-5,600 pairs ringed plover (red status ) 110,000 pairs oystercatcher amber -

17. CCO survey data – used for conservation
July 2016 ‐ update
Breach developed since September 2015 to the latest survey in June LIDAR
Created time series that showed how the breach developed
Report - Uwe Dornbusch (EA)

18. Monitoring Medmerry - habitat compensation site
LIDAR used to show the evolution of the breach and roll back of the shingle ridge 100m
Exposed a compacted mud foreshore
'Overwash fans' of shingle

19. Operational Use of Remote Sensing for Environmental Monitoring
Dynamic nature of the coast
Geomorphology
Topography influences the habitat formation
Remote sensing - large areas over different time periods

20. Examples Shingle-morphological change; vegetation cover over time
Saltmarsh/mudflat- accretion/erosion patterns over whole estuary
Shore profile transects in individual units

21. Defra Centre of Excellence on Earth Observations
Defra 25 year plan for the Environment
Launch 16 October 2015
Greater use of earth observation - drive to use the best information with least cost
Cefas, Natural England, JNCC, Environment Agency and the core department