Assessing the potential for environmental monitoring using ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) with riverside and Scottish data

Ground beetle survey data were used to produce three habitat classifications; a national and a local riverside classification generated by hand searching and a Scottish classification from a pitfall trap survey. The classifications provided a clear picture of the habitats of the assemblages sampled, even when the data were from a number of sources, and were especially good with data from standardised sampling. Species rarity scores were derived from distribution records from either national or local surveys. These were used to generate site rarity values by summing species scores and dividing by the number of species. These were used as a measure of site quality and provided a mechanism for ranking sites within habitat groups. This methodology worked at the local, regional and national scales and it appears that there is great potential for the use of ground beetle data from structured, standardised surveys in assessing environmental quality.