Improving Europe’s biodiversity monitoring
The EU-funded MAMBO project has released its first 1.pdf (policy brief) outlining its contribution to the development of the European Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC). The EU Parliament and European Commission have already taken action to set up EBOCC, whose mission was formulated by major national and EU-level stakeholders through another EU-funded project, EuropaBON. Current biodiversity monitoring data in Europe is insufficient to drive well-targeted actions that tackle biodiversity loss cost-effectively and at different scales. EBOCC’s mission is to coordinate biodiversity monitoring efforts in Europe and set up a shared European biodiversity monitoring framework. It will achieve this by supporting coordination between EU Member States and monitoring organisations, integrating monitoring data, implementing clear data flows, and analysing information at EU level to derive indicators and support policies.
A vision of harmonised monitoring
“EBOCC’s vision is to operationalise harmonised biodiversity monitoring data flows for the conservation and sustainable use of Europe’s terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems,” state the policy brief authors. The centre’s vision is to help the EU coordinate and streamline a system of observations, data assimilation methods, models, knowledge and capacity-building efforts by 2030. This will “deliver regular information on the state of biodiversity in Europe, in ways that promote integration and re-use to benefit all EU citizens and institutions.” To contribute to EBOCC’s mission, MAMBO is currently mapping stakeholder landscapes and synthesising user community needs, and it plans to engage this community in the co-design and adaptation of future monitoring tools. MAMBO is integrating its monitoring tools with key existing research infrastructures related to the harvesting, transformation, publishing and synthesis of biodiversity monitoring data. It is also joining and expanding current databases with images and sounds to improve machine learning models. These advancements are leading to new image-based monitoring applications and improved indicators of habitat condition derived from remote sensing and LiDAR data. The data from MAMBO’s tools are fed into integrated models that enhance hindcasting, forecasting and adaptive monitoring strategies, making it possible to pinpoint regions with high uncertainty in species distribution models. Cost efficiency assessments are also being carried out to determine where these tools deliver maximum value. MAMBO monitoring tools relevant to EBOCC include AI-based image recognition for European animals and plant communities, acoustic detection and monitoring of animals, and automatic insect cameras, as well as remote sensing for mapping the distribution of ecosystems and habitats and for measuring habitat condition. Armed with such tools, and with its know-how and stakeholder connections, MAMBO has the potential to bring about substantial improvements to Europe’s ecological monitoring landscape, consequently furthering the aims of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. EuropaBON (Europa Biodiversity Observation Network: integrating data streams to support policy), the project under which the terms of reference for establishing a permanent EBOCC were formulated, ended in 2024. The MAMBO (Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity) project ends in 2026. For more information, please see: MAMBO project website EuropaBON project website
Keywords
MAMBO, EuropaBON, biodiversity, biodiversity monitoring, European Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre, EBOCC, policy, data
