Cost-effective biodiversity monitoring for EU policies

Expected Outcome:

Proposals are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• more precise and more efficient biodiversity monitoring schemes, building on advanced technologies and more abundant data, are available;
• policymakers and relevant competent authorities have more efficient and user-friendly tools at their disposal to implement and evaluate results of the EU environmental legislation, leading to simplification of policy implementation and better protection and restoration of ecosystems.

Scope:

The implementation of the EU environmental legislation, in particular the Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR), the Soil Monitoring Law (SML) and the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), requires precise monitoring of biodiversity to ensure that objectives are met. For instance, under the NRR, Member States are required to monitor annually the abundance and diversity of pollinator species using a specific monitoring method. Under the WFD implementation, the determination of ecological status of freshwater ecosystems is based on biodiversity monitoring. Under the SML, Member States have to monitor mandatorily the diversity of fungi and bacteria in soil through DNA metabarcoding, and optionally of archaea, protists and other relevant soil organisms. Data from these monitoring schemes, if produced according to the FAIR principle, can contribute to other monitoring frameworks, for instance to monitor the progress of the environmental objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Trimmed here, the full scope, expected outcomes and award criteria are on the official topic page ↗.