Boosting FORest BIOdiversity MONitoring in Europe through smart combination of existing data
Call
Duration
01/04/2024 – 30/03/2026
Total grant
Approx. 912 thsd. €
More information
Kris VERHEYEN
kris.verheyen@ugent.be
Partners of the project
- Forest & Nature Lab, Department of Environment, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
- Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
- SLU Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
- Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic
Context
The EU’s lack of harmonised forest monitoring data poses a risk to its forests and policy goals, including climate, rural development, sustainable bioeconomy, and biodiversity. While National Forest Inventories (NFIs) provide extensive data, they focus more on wood resources than biodiversity dynamics. The NFIs, which started about two decades ago, also don’t capture longer-term changes in biodiversity, leading to a ‘shifting baseline syndrome’. To understand recent biodiversity changes in forests, the NFI data should be complemented with monitoring data from the mid-20th century. Such long-term data have recently become available through the forestREplot database, which includes data from more than 5,000 (quasi)permanent understorey vegetation resurvey plots from about 80 regions across temperate Europe. These data are ideally benchmarked against data coming from more frequently monitored, truly permanent plots using highly standardised protocols. The network of 561 permanent ICP Forests- Level II sites meets these criteria. The challenge now is to effectively combine these data sources, gain additional insights from their joint analysis, and tailor the output to the information needs of different end users.
Main objectives
ForBioMon aims to enhance forest biodiversity monitoring in Europe by smartly combining three existing forest monitoring schemes (NFIs, forestREplot, ICP Forests) and engaging a wide range of stakeholders. The project focuses on understanding long-term biodiversity changes, the environmental drivers behind these changes, mapping forest biodiversity trends, and providing guidance for future monitoring.
Main activities
ForBioMon is novel in its approach, combining the largest EU forest plant monitoring schemes and using advanced statistical modelling and remote sensing data to predict plant biodiversity changes in European forests. The project focuses on three types of activities to guide future monitoring:
- mobilising and integrating the different data sources to derive a set of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) as high-level indicators of biodiversity change;
- linking trends in EBVs to spatial and temporal gradients of environmental drivers, to understand, upscale, and map biodiversity changes in temperate forests in Europe. The project will also explore the potential of including less studied groups like ground floor bryophytes and lichens, as well as historical land-use variables and remote sensing products, to explain biodiversity trends more comprehensively;
- engaging stakeholders throughout the scientific process, to provide additional strategic advice on the outputs of the project, data sharing policies, etc. Consultation and collaboration are done via workshops, questionnaires, and a steering group, along with targeted communication and outreach.