Collections

This collection is dedicated to assembling significant research outputs that map out the relationships between biodiversity and ecological structure, and their impact on the functioning of coastal and marine ecosystems. It highlights the resultant ecosystem services and societal benefits.

The European Union and its Member States are intensely committed to understanding how the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functions can sustain the provision of ecosystem services, goods, and societal benefits. This comprehension is vital for the sustainable use of these resources and for appreciating the natural and social capital aspects of ecosystems, where stakeholder co-creation plays a crucial role.

Open for submissions from the MARBEFES Project consortium (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning leading to Ecosystem Services), this initiative calls for contributions that address significant issues associated with the conceptualization of changes in biodiversity across 12 Broad Belt Transect (BBT) case studies from various regional seas, including the Arctic, Baltic, Northeast Atlantic, and Mediterranean.

These contributions should explore the implications of biodiversity changes for the management and governance of European seas. The BBTs span the entire range of European marine biodiversity, from the frigid Arctic to semi-tropical zones, encompassing dominant habitats and iconic species, and extending from shallow waters to deep-sea environments across diverse socio-economic contexts.

This collection is dedicated to assembling significant research outputs that map out the relationships between biodiversity and ecological structure, and their impact on the functioning of coastal and marine ecosystems. It highlights the resultant ecosystem services and societal benefits.

The Europea ...

The European Union's 2030 Biodiversity Strategy aims to place species and ecosystems on the recovery path by 2030, preserving and restoring Europe's natural capital, and positioning Europe at the forefront of global biodiversity conservation efforts. These commitments urgently respond to the decline of species and the deterioration of nature. A key component of this Strategy is the development of a Trans-European Nature Network (TEN-N) that protects ecosystems and their contributions to people against threats from climate change and unsustainable land use. The TEN-N is expected to increase the resilience of natural ecosystems, supported by the existing Natura 2000 Network and other nationally designated protected areas. New designations are expected to contribute to achieving protected land, including inland waters, comprising 30% of the territory, increasing the network's ecological representativeness, and incorporating novel strictly protected and ecological connectivity areas. Implementing the TEN-N faces major challenges in defining criteria and planning tools to maximize the network's representativeness and connectivity at the European level.

The TEN-N should create a functionally connected system, assimilating biodiversity conservation goals with nature-based solutions for societal needs, such as green and blue infrastructure. In the face of global change, the Network should also ensure that species communities can adapt, providing sufficient and connected spaces for nature. Achieving these goals requires innovative planning approaches, integrating models of biodiversity and ecosystem change with conservation prioritization tools and participatory processes. The TEN-N must be based on SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) conservation and management objectives and monitoring methods.

NaturaConnect aims to support the development of the TEN-N through transdisciplinary research. Participatory processes are central to its activities, involving stakeholder engagement at regional, national, and international levels. Predictive biodiversity and ecosystem service models form the backbone for analyzing protected area representativeness and connectivity, taking into account multiple prioritization criteria and the diverse perspectives and needs of nature conservation. NaturaConnect seeks to develop data, analytical tools, and knowledge to support solutions —namely, the blueprint for TEN-N configurations. It also analyses best practices for governance of area-based conservation measures and potential funding mechanisms to provide the European Commission and Member States with a comprehensive set of planning and implementation support tools.

Only publications directly resulting from the NaturaConnect project are accepted in this collection.

The European Union's 2030 Biodiversity Strategy aims to place species and ecosystems on the recovery path by 2030, preserving and restoring Europe's natural capital, and positioning Europe at the forefront of global biodiversity conservation efforts. These commitments urgently respond to the decline ...

LifeWatch ERIC has embarked on its new destination towards upgrading and (co-)constructing its Infrastructure as a response to the needs of its target communities and stakeholders. Through an industrialization process, all independent data, software components, publications and other types of research products contributed by the Member Countries will be consolidated and integrated to enable collaborative development. The Technology Readiness Level of LifeWatch ERIC will be soaring to TRL9. This process is described in its new Strategic Working Plan on its second implementation period (2022-2026). Accordingly, this topical collection of papers includes articles which describe the main outcomes, that is the deliverables of this new Strategic Working Plan. The deliverables published in this topical collection are of not confidential nature and are developed in the form of a standard, structured template.

LifeWatch ERIC has embarked on its new destination towards upgrading and (co-)constructing its Infrastructure as a response to the needs of its target communities and stakeholders. Through an industrialization process, all independent data, software components, publications and other types of resear ...

Natural science collections are a treasure trove of data that are pivotal in finding solutions from and for nature; from conservation, health, minimising the degradation of natural capital and finding new sources of critical minerals, to addressing the challenges of food security, water scarcity and the impact of natural disasters.

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) that aims to digitally unify natural science collections - some 1.5 billion specimens - from 175 museums, botanical gardens, and universities across 23 countries in a distributed infrastructure that makes these collections physically and digitally open and accessible for all forms of research and innovation. DiSSCo’s preparatory phase ran from January 2020 to February 2023. This collection of articles highlights the major outputs of the DiSSCo Prepare project, which address five aspects of implementation readiness: the technical, scientific, data, organisational and financial readiness levels.

Natural science collections are a treasure trove of data that are pivotal in finding solutions from and for nature; from conservation, health, minimising the degradation of natural capital and finding new sources of critical minerals, to addressing the challenges of food security, water scarcity and ...

The BESTMAP RIO Collection will host key outputs relating to the new modelling framework the project is developing. The project’s work focuses on supporting EU policy design and monitoring, by addressing the complexity of decisions made by farmers and the wider impact of agricultural policy on natural, social and cultural assets in rural areas of Europe.

This Collection will continue to be developed further as the BESTMAP project continues to promote a sustainable future for the agriculture sector in Europe.

The BESTMAP RIO Collection will host key outputs relating to the new modelling framework the project is developing. The project’s work focuses on supporting EU policy design and monitoring, by addressing the complexity of decisions made by farmers and the wider impact of agricultural policy on natur ...

Observations are key to understand the drivers of biodiversity loss, and the impacts on ecosystem services and ultimately on people. Many EU policies and initiatives demand unbiased, integrated and regularly updated biodiversity and ecosystem service data. However, efforts to monitor biodiversity are spatially and temporally fragmented, taxonomically biased, and lack integration in Europe. EuropaBON aims to bridge this gap by designing an EU-wide framework for monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services. EuropaBON harnesses the power of modelling essential variables to integrate different reporting streams, data sources, and monitoring schemes. These essential variables provide consistent knowledge about multiple dimensions of biodiversity change across space and time. They can then be analyzed and synthesized to support decision-making at different spatial scales, from the sub-national to the European scale, through the production of indicators and scenarios. To develop essential biodiversity and ecosystem variables workflows that are policy relevant, EuropaBON is built around stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange (WP2). EuropaBON will work with stakeholders to identify user and policy needs for biodiversity monitoring and investigate the feasibility of setting up a center to coordinate monitoring activities across Europe (WP2). Together with stakeholders, EuropaBON will assess current monitoring efforts to identify gaps, data and workflow bottlenecks, and analyse cost-effectiveness of different schemes (WP3). This will be used to co-design improved monitoring schemes using novel technologies to become more representative temporally, spatially and taxonomically, delivering multiple benefits to users and society (WP4). Finally, EuropaBON will demonstrate in a set of showcases how workflows tailored to the Birds Directive, Habitats Directive, Water Framework Directive, Climate and Restoration Policy, and the Bioeconomy Strategy, can be implemented (WP5).

This collection only admits publications that are a direct product of the EuropaBON project.

Observations are key to understand the drivers of biodiversity loss, and the impacts on ecosystem services and ultimately on people. Many EU policies and initiatives demand unbiased, integrated and regularly updated biodiversity and ecosystem service data. However, efforts to monitor biodiversity ar ...