As part of its work programme, Biodiversa+ supports interoperability and harmonisation of biodiversity monitoring protocols to harmonise biodiversity monitoring schemes across Europe.
Biodiversa+ developed a guide on best practices to harmonise biodiversity monitoring protocols across scales, designed to provide support in effectively integrating monitoring results. This guide offers an exploration of the fundamental concepts and approaches for biodiversity monitoring protocols, as well as recommendations on the most suitable approaches for harmonising monitoring protocols, taking into account contextual factors.
This study also emphasises the importance of establishing common frameworks among monitoring communities, with minimum requirements facilitating integration and harmonisation of monitoring results, promoting protocol quality and stakeholder ownership.
A key step in the production of this guide and to tackle this issue was to carry out a literature survey on existing transnational biodiversity monitoring programmes, to get an idea of what is being done and how. This study has analysed fourteen case studies and shows the possible strategy combinations for data workflows and governance to deliver general trends at the European scale.
Building on this study, a workshop on the strategies to harmonise biodiversity monitoring protocols was held in Paris in March 2023. This workshop gathered 26 actors involved in biodiversity monitoring, representing European and (sub-)national initiatives and institutions, researchers, Biodiversa+ partners and representatives from EuropaBON, our key collaborator.
Watch a Biodiversa+ presentation that was given at the GEOBON 2023 Global Conference in October 2023. It was part of the session “Linking biodiversity monitoring networks to assess biodiversity change across scales”.
Designing a universal protocol for biodiversity monitoring is challenging due to diverse landscapes and existing regional programs. Biodiversa+ proposes using the Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) framework to harmonise existing programs while maintaining local adaptability.