Ask the Experts: Things to Consider While Conducting a BNG Baseline Assessment

Ask the Experts: Things to Consider While Conducting a BNG Baseline Assessment

10 Dec 2024 | 7 min read

Introducing our all-new “Ask the Experts” series where we explore key topics in biodiversity and ecological management with insights from industry experts. In this debut episode, Sam Kendray, Senior Ecologist at AiDASH, breaks down the fundamentals of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) baseline assessments—what they are, why they matter, and the crucial things to consider while conducting them.

In this session, Sam provides a detailed understanding of on-site habitats, their ecological condition, and baseline biodiversity value—an indispensable foundation for BNG planning and compliance.

Learn how innovative technologies like high-resolution satellite imagery and AI-driven tools can streamline habitat mapping, enhance survey accuracy, and address challenges such as identifying irreplaceable habitats like ancient woodlands. Sam also highlights the importance of adhering to BNG-specific methodologies and differentiating them from other standards, such as UKHAB.

Join us to explore expert strategies and cutting-edge tools that simplify BNG baseline assessments, ensuring precise results and reduced errors.

What is a BNG baseline assessment?

BNG Baseline assessments are an essential part of BNG. This provides a baseline habitat assessment before works are started. This is condition-assessed habitats on-site to give the condition of each habitat, and gives you the baseline value of habitats. This is essential for planning future.

What should ecologists prioritise in a baseline assessment?

One thing would be a desktop study before going to site. This can help indicate areas of high value and give an ecologist an idea of what habitats they’re going to be surveying when on site. It’s important that an ecologist keeps a comprehensive species list to add justification to condition criteria and any photographs. The main important thing before for site visit and during a site visit would be accurate mapping, so if habitat mapping is not accurate, it’s going to give a false baseline value, and it wouldn’t be a valid survey.

How can technology enhance the quality and efficiency of a baseline assessment?

Technologies, such as AI and satellite data, can provide really important information before you go to site. High-resolution satellite imagery can help to map out some of the habitats before you go to site, and this allows ecologists to focus on the specific habitats when on site and give some indication as to what they may be surveying and which skills they’re going to require, and potentially, you can screen up certain sites. You may discover that it’s full of irreplaceable habitat, such as ancient woodlands, and you may decide just to not proceed any further.

Technology, such as BNGAI™, can also auto-populate the Statutory Metric, which reduces the need for ecologist to deal with data and help ensure accuracy.

What are the biggest challenges ecologists face?

Ecologists can face the number of challenges when they’re on a diverse site. One big challenge is delineating each area of habitat. Doing this accurately on site is quite a challenge on a phone or a tablet. I think, across the industry, at the moment, BNG survey experience is a bit of a problem, while everyone gets up to speed with the differences between the BNG survey methodology and UKHab, for example, mosaic habitats could be met quite differently, and I know that this can cause problems. So with BNGAI™, you’ve got the preliminary assessment when you go to site and that can help to direct the surveyor into the right area and you can make edits as required and indicate any habitats of higher distinctiveness or potentially priority habitats on site.

How can developers and planners ensure their assessments with BNG regulatory requirements?

To ensure the BNG assessment meets the regulatory requirements, it’s important that surveyors refer to the metric guidance and use the metric condition sheets. With BNGAI™, all the condition sheets are built into the program, and as you select each criteria, it will automatically tally that up and it’s got the logic built in to tell you what condition that habitat will be in. One common pitfall is to think the BNG survey is exactly the same as UKHab, so it’s important to note the differences between the two. BNG habitats don’t align perfectly with UKHab, and I know that this can catch a lot of people out. When on site, it’s also important to be aware of rivers. For rivers, you need the MoRPH qualification to be able to survey those. And, it’s not just rivers on site, it’s the encroachment into them. So, it’s important to have a look at that before you go to site and understand the need for any river survey.

Another important part of BNG is identifying the high-value habitats and any areas of irreplaceable habitats that are already mapped. With BNGAI™, that’s already mapped before you go to site, and if a surveyor thinks they found another one they can add it manually. But they get that Baseline habitat marked already.

To summarise, the BNG Baseline assessment it’s an essential part of any BNG assessment and it’s kind of broken down into three main points:
1) To make sure someone goes to site and surveys the habitats using the condition sheets
2) To know any high strategic significance areas on site or any irreplaceable habitats on site, such as ancient Woodlands, and
3) To map according to BNG guidance not UKHab, and we believe that BNGAI™ product can help to simplify all of these and reduce the room for error.

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