New tools co-developed by SIB will enable near real-time monitoring of European biodiversity and user-friendly assessments of habitats and species at a scale not previously possible. These innovative outputs of the Biodiversity Meets Data project – launched this month and funded by the EU – will help natural resource managers and policymakers put Europe's biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030.
Enabling data-driven habitat protection and restoration
In response to ongoing biodiversity declines, the EU has set ambitious targets to expand its network of protected areas and restore degraded ecosystems by 2030. The Biodiversity Meets Data project will support these efforts by providing innovative tools for monitoring European biodiversity in near real-time and assessing species at multiple spatial scales and under future environmental scenarios.
SIB’s Environmental Bioinformatics group is leading work to compile input environmental data for these tools, by enabling the integration of a large variety of data types into FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) repositories. Other SIB scientists will also play a major role in packaging tools and relevant data into user-friendly ‘Virtual Research Environments’, where natural resource managers and policymakers can quickly and easily investigate specific questions relevant to their work.
The Biodiversity Meets Data project contributes to the Environmental Bioinformatics group mission to develop data science tools and services for biodiversity preservation and restoration – as well as SIB’s strategic objective to contribute to environmental conservation efforts.
This project adds species observations and geolocation information to the various types of biological and environmental data we FAIRify and integrate to support data-driven conservation policies and actions.
Compiling diverse data across time and space
The project addresses two challenges to monitoring biodiversity change: a lack of detailed information on the current size and location of different species populations, and difficulties in accessing historical species observation data. This will be achieved by:
- enabling continuous, less labour-intensive and larger-scale species observations, through camera traps, audio devices, and standard protocols for environmental DNA sampling;
- analysing the captured data with AI tools to identify the species;
- integrating the new observation data – plus historical data from environmental impact studies, protected area surveys, and other sources – into freely accessible FAIR data repositories.
SIB leads work to facilitate implementation of these processes by natural resource managers. Examples include providing plug-and-play tools for high-throughput capturing and processing of observation data, developing frameworks and services to ensure common data standards and management practices, and providing training on FAIR data repositories.
SIB also leads the development of a comprehensive data catalogue that compiles these biological data with environmental, climate and policy data from other partners, together with taxonomic, geospatial, temporal and other key information for downstream analyses.
Innovative tools for monitoring Europe’s nature at new scales
The project will harness the comprehensive, geolocated data to provide near real-time biodiversity monitoring. The data will also feed into a suite of Virtual Research Environments co-developed by SIB, which provide packages of cutting-edge, user-friendly tools for:
- conducting biodiversity assessments and trend analyses;
- identifying and exploring drivers of environmental change;
- modelling future biodiversity changes under different climate and land cover scenarios.
These analyses will give natural resource managers, policymakers and other conservation stakeholders a more complete understanding of the status of species and habitats – across land, freshwater and marine environments; at the local, regional, national and European level; and over time. This will inform more effective biodiversity protection and restoration effects.
A collaborative effort between diverse biodiversity and data experts
The Biodiversity Meets Data consortium comprises 14 European biodiversity monitoring initiatives, publishers, and research infrastructures. The project will engage end-user stakeholders to co-design and co-develop the different outputs, including a ‘Single Access Point’ from which all data repositories, Virtual Research Environments, and services will be available. This collaborative approach will ensure broad adoption of the project’s frameworks and outputs, and effective support to key European biodiversity policies.
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Image credit: photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash
