GRAND CHALLENGE: Effective and Meaningful Biodiversity Conservation Strategies Across Scales

In the Spotlight: Using and Supporting Infrastructures for Monitoring Biodiversity Changes

Monitoring schemes: Birds, butterflies, and bumblebees 

For more than 50 years, volunteer ornithologists have been counting birds at more than a thousand sites around Sweden as a part of the Swedish Bird Survey. The last 15 years, the Swedish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme has been running in parallel. It is another volunteer-based scheme covering more than 600 sites annually. These two surveys are part of the environmental monitoring programmes of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and most county administrative boards. The main aim is to follow population development to detect changes over time. From the data, which is collected using the same standardised method every year, it is possible to track changes in population numbers and distributions and produce indicators for three of Sweden’s official environmental objectives. Data from the surveys is further combined with data from other European countries to create European bird and butterfly indicators used among others to evaluate policy instruments such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The monitoring data is also part of the Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure (SBDI). The monitoring schemes are coordinated by BECC researchers Professor Åke Lindström and Dr Lars Pettersson at the Department of Biology, LU. BECC researchers have lately been involved in national and European pilots developing a framework for pollinator monitoring. These data are now used to establish standards in the pollinator monitoring scheme that is expected to become a requirement for EU member states shortly. 

Recently, BECC researchers met to highlight possibilities offered by other infrastructures connected to biodiversity data, including the Biological Museum and the Botanical Garden at LU.

Following climate and biodiversity at the Latnjajaure field station – a part of the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX)

BECC has a long history of contributing to the monitoring programmes at Latnjajaure field station and is the backbone and only long-term funder for this. Most monitoring activities at Latnjajaure are related to the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), a collaborative effort involving scientists from more than 11 countries, including all the Arctic nations. ITEX seeks to examine the response of circumpolar cold adapted plant species and tundra ecosystems to environmental change, specifically to an increase in summer temperature. Empirical knowledge based on experiments coupled with available evolutionary history, ecology, and genetics will help predict species responses to climate change. Latnjajaure is today one of the two remaining master-sites in the network, with warming treatments since 1993, and with a new established experiment on effects on increased precipitation and its combination with warming (started 2023). The original ITEX monitoring, including five different plant communities, has also been upgraded to include monitoring of herbivory (through the herbivory network), biodiversity (through the LifePLAN network), and carbon flux measurements (through the Tundra Flux database). The station also hosts a large variety of individual research projects and has fostered a number of Masters and PhDs over the years. The monitoring program at Latnjajaure field station is coordinated by BECC researcher senior lecturer Mats Björkman at the Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences and the Alpine and Polar Ecology group at UGOT. 

In the Spotlight: Observing the CBD Global Framework for Biodiversity Being Agreed Upon

In 2022 a new global framework for biodiversity was agreed upon at COP15 in Montreal after four years of negotiations, concluding four state targets and twenty-three action targets to be met by 2030. In addition, decisions on indicators on implementation and financial plans were included. The new Global Biodiversity Framework is seen as an important step towards addressing the nature crisis, not least the ambitious goal to restore, protect and conserve 30 percent of land and 30 percent of the water globally by 2030, and may have important implications also for policy processes at EU level and in Sweden. 

BECC researcher Dr Maria Blasí Romero at CEC, LU, joined the meeting as an observer representing BECC. Her take home messages were, apart from the urgency of finding solutions for implementation of targets to reach the goals, that it is crucial to work on the driving forces behind biodiversity loss such as loss of habitat, land-use change and climate change, but also on technology, economics, and governance, and that there is need of more data to support decisions. Moreover, she pinpointed the need for better incentives/reward systems for researchers to get involved in the important science-policy interface, and for more robust media coverage of biodiversity. Coincidentally, BECC has since 2022 a communications officer displaying BECC research to society.

Continue to next chapter: GRAND CHALLENGE: the Carbon Cycle Response to Anthropogenic and Biophysical Drivers – Scratching the Surface