Conference Agenda

For three decades, the nature directives in Europe have required countries to report regularly on the status of different aspects of biodiversity, particularly those related to the species and the habitats in the directives. However, no systematic effort to design an biodiversity monitoring system had been carried out until recently. EuropaBON was a research project tasked with the challenging of designing a framework for an European biodiversity observation system. It identifies a set of 70 variables to monitor multiple dimensions of biodiversity that are feasible and policy relevant. Here we present how these variables match existing regulatory reporting requirements and upcoming requirements such as the nature restoration law. We also examine how these variables go beyond existing monitoring requirements to strengthen our understanding of biodiversity change ands it drivers.

We assessed the capability of existing monitoring programs and data flows in Europe to produce a set of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) across the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine realms. We proposed a novel framework to analyze data flows' bottlenecks based on 16 criteria related to diverse aspects linked to data collection and sampling, modelling, interoperability and IT infrastructure and data integration. The main bottlenecks in the current European biodiversity monitoring data flows mainly relate to data integration problems. These include lack of long-term funding, limited data flow automation, and insufficient use of modelling to quantify and map EBVs at large scales. We also found various data collection bottlenecks that hinder the production of EBVs for certain taxonomic groups such as zooplankton in freshwater systems, lichens or terrestrial arthropods. Moreover, we found that monitoring data in European marine waters are fragmented and primarily integrated at the regional level, with biodiversity from Southern and Eastern European waters being scarcely represented in continental databases. We discuss how these bottlenecks affect the ability to generate a broad set of EBV indicators that can be used to track the state of the European environment in a harmonized and holistic manner in the long term.

Identifying gaps in current biodiversity monitoring capacity in Europe is crucial for successfully implementing and supporting a European Biodiversity Observation Network. We leveraged monitoring data from Europe to evaluate the capability for producing field-based Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) as defined by EuropaBON. We covered 44 EBVs corresponding to the six generic EBV classes defined by the GEO BON network, across the freshwater, marine, and terrestrial realms. We found that monitoring across Europe is taxonomically biased and does not cover all regions. Moreover, sampling density and frequency are usually insufficient for the production of the EBVs at the desired spatial and temporal resolutions, there is a lack of long-term time-series data, and raw data needed to produce the EBVs is hardly accessible. As a consequence, monitoring data is lacking for many taxa. Our work provides the most comprehensive continental-scale assessment of ongoing monitoring capacities in relation to user and policy needs, providing guidance for the identification of important new areas and target taxa for monitoring in Europe.

As the impacts of global change continue to unfold, a pressing need arises for a coordinated biodiversity monitoring effort across Europe. An important research question is how to best design a spatial sampling scheme to monitor several essential biodiversity variables and changes resulting from diverse global change drivers. This research focuses on testing the effectiveness of four distinct sampling designs to provide a representative assessment of both species occupancy trends and habitat extent. The evaluation leverages data sourced from Nature directives and citizen science, aiming to assess the performance of these sampling designs. Additionally, the study examines the capacity of the sampling designs to detect changes in land use types, climate change speed, nitrogen deposition intensity, and the effectiveness of the protected areas network. To enhance practical implementation, the proximity to existing monitoring sites is considered. Preliminary results suggest that, depending on the dataset under consideration, grid-based sampling consistently outperforms random design. However, the success of stratified sampling is found to be influenced by the specific type of stratification applied. This research sets the stage for the development of a comprehensive and adaptive monitoring framework capable of addressing the dynamic challenges posed by global change to Europe's biodiversity.

The Europa Biodiversity Observation Network (EuropaBON) includes one of the largest and most influential biodiversity communities in Europe. The aim of this impressive network of stakeholders is to co-design a seamless European biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring system that integrates existing biodiversity data and fills remaining data gaps. Network members are included in each step of designing the system from identifying user and policy needs, assessing existing European monitoring schemes and identifying data gaps, to defining Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) to be monitored by the system, and demonstrating in a set of showcases how workflows tailored to various EU policies, can be implemented. We therefore developed the EuropaBON dashboard that allows users to map and interact with data and displays of Europe's biodiversity community, its key actors and their connections. It offers high-level information in one view that can be used to identify occupational sectors (e.g., academia, private industry), realm (e.g., marine, freshwater), or geographic regions (e.g., eastern Europe, southern Europe) with the most connections and pinpoint the central actors within the network.

Maintaining marine healthy ecosystems is crucial for sustaining life on Earth and promoting human well-being. Unfortunately, biodiversity is declining, because of human-induced stressors like coastal sprawl, overexploitation of resources, non-indigenous species (NIS) spread, and pollution. Monitoring marine biodiversity changes through space and time is fundamental to defining and enrolling suitable actions for habitat conservation and preservation. This is particularly needed in those areas that are very rich in species compared to their low surface extension and characterized by strong human pressures, such as the Mediterranean Sea. Subtidal rocky benthic habitats exhibit a complex structural architecture and harbor a multitude of small, often unknown organisms. Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) have been developed as standardized sampling tools to study hard-bottom marine communities, enabling replicable and comparable data collection across various locations and times. Here, we present how ARMS are used to 1) evaluate alpha, beta, and intraspecific diversity along the Mediterranean Sea and 2) survey and monitor NIS in harbor environments. By combining traditional morphological taxonomy with modern techniques like DNA-sequencing (DNA barcoding and metabarcoding) and image analysis, we show that ARMS are powerful standardized tools to assess and follow spatial and temporal changes in Mediterranean hard-bottom marine communities.