DOI: 10.5061/dryad.msbcc2g4n
title: Survey responses from stakeholders managing, growing, advising or assessing UK populations of Juniperus communis

description: Increased imports of plants and timber through global trade networks
 provide frequent opportunities for introduction of novel plant pathogens
 that can cross-over from commercial to natural environments, threatening
 native species and ecosystem functioning. Prevention or management of such
 outbreaks relies on a diversity of cross-sectoral stakeholders acting
 along the invasion pathway. Yet guidelines are often only produced for a
 small number of stakeholders, missing opportunities to consider ways to
 control outbreaks in other parts of the pathway. We used the infection of
 common juniper with the invasive pathogen Phytophthora austrocedri as a
 case study to explore the utility of decision tools for managing outbreaks
 of plant pathogens in the wider environment. We invited stakeholders who
 manage or monitor juniper populations or supply plants or management
 advice to participate in a survey exploring their awareness of, and
 ability to use, an existing decision tree produced by a coalition of
 statutory agencies augmented with new distribution maps designed by the
 authors. Awareness of the decision tree was low across all stakeholder
 groups including those planting juniper for restoration purposes.
 Stakeholders requested that decision tools contain greater detail about
 environmental conditions that increase host vulnerability to the pathogen,
 and clearer examples of when management practices implicated in pathogen
 introduction or spread should not be adopted. The results demonstrate the
 need to set clear objectives for the purpose of decision tools and to
 frame and co-produce them with many different stakeholders, including
 overlooked groups such as growers and advisory agents, to improve
 management of pathogens in the wider environment.
description: Please see the journal article Donald <em>et al</em>.
 2024 in Ecology and Evolution for a comprehensive description of the
 methods.  In summary, a self-completion questionnaire
 was designed consisting of 21 open and closed format questions of which 13
 were mandatory. The survey asked three questions about stakeholder
 experience and role relating to juniper management, <em>Phytophthora
 austrocedri </em>and juniper planting. It was then presented in two
 main sections with: i) six questions pertaining to the awareness and use
 of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs Juniper
 management guidelines published in 2017 and ii) nine questions about the
 sources and utility of spatial information (distribution maps) followed by
 three questions about the expected importance of potential infection risk
 factors. Both the management guidelines and the Shiny app with maps of the
 distribution of juniper, <em>P. austrocedri</em> and juniper
 planting compiled in September 2020 are linked to as supplementary
 information below.  Relevant stakeholders were
 identified by pooling our own knowledge of individuals and organisations
 associated with juniper in any capacity and sector we suspected retained
 privileged information. In total, we distributed the survey by email to
 109 individuals (not including those forwarded by recipients) and received
 41 completed surveys. A short section at the end of the survey asked
 participants to provide their job title and a description of their role or
 specialisation. This information was used to assign their responses to a
 stakeholder type (agent, assessor, grower, manager). Please see the
 journal article for a full description of stakeholder type
 definitions.  The dataset was processed to remove
 personal information including participant names, job titles,
 organisations and any comments referencing specific work locations.
 Responses are otherwise reproduced exactly as received.
description: # Survey responses from stakeholders managing, growing, advising or
 assessing UK populations of *Juniperus communis*
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.msbcc2g4n](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.msbcc2g4n) This dataset publishes responses received from 41 stakeholders sent a self-completion questionnaire in October 2020 asking about their awareness of a decision framework presented in the Juniper Management Guidelines (Defra, 2017, available at [JuniperManagementGuidelinesSeptember2017Published.pdf (planthealthcentre.scot)](https://www.planthealthcentre.scot/sites/www.planthealthcentre.scot/files/inline-files/JuniperManagementGuidelinesSeptember2017Published.pdf)), importance of abiotic and biotic factors stakeholders believe contribute to the spread of the plant pathogen Phytophthora austrocedri, and the utility of accompanying distribution maps for juniper and P. austrocedri in the UK created by the authors (available at [https://floradonald-juniper-planting-2020.shinyapps.io/Planting2/](https://floradonald-juniper-planting-2020.shinyapps.io/Planting2/)). ## Description of the data and file structure All personal and geographically identifying information has been removed from the dataset. References to specific locations are redacted using square brackets, references made to specific agencies or organisations have been generalised. Each question / subquestion forms the header rows of the dataset with answers provided below. A copy of the questionnaire is also provided (Supplementary File 1). Each column heading is a question asked in the survey. The question number is included in the heading so can be matched up to the copy of the questionnaire (Supplementary File 1). The only exceptions are the first column with the heading "Timestamp" which shows when the survey was completed in the format yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss am/pm GMT as recorded in Google Forms, and the fourth column with the heading "Role" which lists the stakeholder type each participant was assigned to by the authors.  Note that survey participants were given a bank of options for questions 17 and 18. They were asked to pick their top five risks and then rank in order of importance where 1 is most important. * Options presented for question 17 on abiotic risk factors were: rainfall, soil moisture, surface runoff, fiver flow, nearest river, elevation, slope, aspect, temperature, climate suitability, soil texture, soil depth, soil pH * Options presented for question 18 on biotic risk factors were: juniper presence, juniper planting, deer density, livestock density, habitat type, bird species, recreation, nearest footpath Empty cells and "n/a" values * blank cells represent questions that survey users did not provide a response for; 13 of 21 questions were mandatory so no response was available as an option to survey participants for eight questions * n/a values are the response given by survey participants to questions; the formatting of 'n/a' responses was standardised but otherwise left unchanged Abbreviations and specific terms referred to in survey responses: * *Phytophthora austrocedri* is referred to in the dataset in a variety of ways including 'P.a', 'Paus', 'P. austracedri', 'P, cedr.'. * BSBI stands for Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland who provide distribution data for vascular plants including juniper [Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (bsbi.org)](https://bsbi.org/) * NPMS is the National Plant Monitoring Scheme [NPMS – Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (bsbi.org)](https://bsbi.org/npms) * FC is an abbreviation for Forestry Commission England  * FR is an abbreviation for Forest Research, the UK forestry research agency * iNaturalist is a platform for natural history observations made by citizen scientists across the UK [A Community for Naturalists · iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) * LIS refers to the Forestry Commission England Land Information Search [Use the Forestry Commission map browser and Land Information Search - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/use-the-land-information-search) * MAGIC refers to an online data platform used as a repository by statutory agencies based in England [MAGIC (defra.gov.uk)](https://magic.defra.gov.uk/) * NBN is an abbreviation for the UK National Biodiversity Network that collates and publishes natural history records as distribution maps [National Biodiversity Network (nbn.org.uk)](https://nbn.org.uk/)