Towards national biodiversity monitoring coordination centres

Duration

2023

Partners involved

The pilot was coordinated by the Ministry of the Environment of Finland, and involved partners from ten countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy (Autonomous Province of Bolzano), Israel, Portugal (Azores), and Sweden.

More information

Aino Lipsanen

Context

The ultimate aim of Biodiversa+ for biodiversity monitoring is to establish a transnational European network of national biodiversity monitoring schemes. This pilot supported that aim by providing a transnational benchmarking of the current biodiversity governance situation on national and sub-national levels. The pilot also reported the current practices of the data interoperability solutions across the countries represented by contributing partners.

Main objectives

This pilot focused on:

  • Describing the organisational (i.e., governance) structure of national (or sub-national) biodiversity monitoring networks, including the pros and cons of the current system and expectations for future development;
  • Describing the data management and interoperability situation of the current national biodiversity monitoring data, including challenges and best practices of the data interoperability solutions, and the future development needs;
  • Reporting how or if data standards such as Darwin Core (DwC) and metadata standards such as Ecological Metadata Language (EML) are currently used in national data management systems and workflows, and evaluating their applicability or need for evolution for monitoring data through use cases.

Main activities

Each participant developed a national/sub-national report to describe the state of the art, and organised a national/sub-national seminar to gather input from monitoring stakeholders and experts. In addition, a joint workshop together with the EuropaBON project was organised to shape key elements for transnational coordination of biodiversity monitoring in Europe.

Main outcomes

Governance Pilot Conclusions

The pilot’s report, benchmarking biodiversity monitoring across ten European countries and sub-national regions, reveals significant variation in governance and data management approaches, despite common use of data standards like Darwin Core and EML. While half of the participants already have national hubs, the report recommends establishing such hubs in all regions to facilitate connection with the European Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC).