Research Projects

The European Topic Centre on Biodiversity and Ecosystems (ETC BE) is a consortium of 24 European research institutions, organizations and national agencies with expertise in terrestrial, aquatic and marine biodiversity and ecosystems. Coordinated by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), the ETC-BE supports the European Environment Agency (EEA) in its mission to implement EU directives, strategies and policies and to provide information to policymakers and the public.

In particular, our team collaborates in the implementation of EU biodiversity legislations, their data flows and data reporting (e.g. Nature Directives, Invasive Alien Species, Nature Restoration Law, Natura 2000), as well as in the maintenance and further development of Information Systems (e.g. BISE).

Our group leads tasks related to:

• Status and trends of species and habitats under the Nature Directives
• Habitat types support, including EUNIS revision and maps
• Species support (harmonization and streamlining of scientific names)
• National Restoration Plans under the EU Nature Restoration Law
• Periodical reporting under the EU Nature Restoration Law
• Online catalogue of best practices in nature restoration
• Development of indicators to monitor the recovery of European ecosystems
• Support to the EU Regulation 1143/2014 on Invasive Alien Species (IAS)
• Protected areas dataflows and sufficiency assessments
• SEBI Biodiversity Indicators

And contributes to tasks on:

• Biodiversity Information System (BISE)
• Protected areas – scenarios for the expansion of the Trans-European Nature Network

Researchers from our lab involved in the project:

Henrique Pereira, project coordinator

Brigitte Braschler

Rafaella Canessa

Heather Cohen

Rowan Dunn-Capper

Miguel Fernandez

Néstor Fernandez

Jose Valdez

Other iDiv researchers involved:

Helge Bruehlheide

Ute Jandt

Duration: January 2023 to December 2026

Funding: ETC BE is funded by the European Environment Agency

info: https://www.eionet.europa.eu/etcs/etc-be

The European Union aims to reduce net carbon emissions by 55% in 2030 and become climate neutral by 2050. These goals can only be met if it boosts carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems, preferably while fostering socio-environmental co-benefits such as conserving biodiversity, adapting to climate change, and safeguarding socio-economic and cultural values. Both the IPCC and the IPBES have emphasized the great potential of ecosystem restoration and related nature-based solutions (NbS) for addressing the challenge.

wildE introduces ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as an innovative restoration approach to create climate benefits while also addressing other socio-environmental needs. This project will generate comprehensive case-comparative data on European rewilding trends and outcomes, while also quantify the net social, economic and environmental benefits, synergies, and trade-offs related to rewilding and alternative land use options. Finally, this project aims to develop cutting-edge projections for future land use and climate scenarios; and also, to develop tangible and readily accessible decision-support and management guidelines to enable policymakers, conservation managers, communities, and the private sector to co-construct climate-smart rewilding strategies as effective NbS for meeting the EU’s climate and biodiversity targets.

Project PI’s: Henrique Miguel Pereira & Néstor Fernández

Our researchers involved in the project:

• Magali Weissgerber is developing climate-smart quantitative indicators to characterize rewilding contexts and outcomes. Those indicators will be spatially resolved and possible to derive from modelled outputs. They will notably focus on ecosystem variables related to carbon cycling and on trophic complexity.
• Gavin S. Stark is responsible for the further development of a conceptual framework for climate-smart rewilding. In addition, he will examine the costs and benefits of ecosystem restoration using rewilding approaches, while developing biodiversity projections for rewilding under Nature Futures scenarios (NFF), using countryside species-area relationships (cSAR/SAR) and other models (e.g., species distribution models).

Duration of the Project: 1 January 2023 to 1 January 2027

Funding information:  The wildE project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programs under grant agreement No 101081251.

Website: www.wilde-project.eu/rewilding-baselines

The magnitude and dynamics of the global biodiversity crisis are hard to quantify and require rapid, reliable and repeatable biodiversity monitoring data which decision makers can use to evaluate policy options. Providing such information – from local to global levels and within timescales relevant to policy – calls for improved integration of data on biodiversity from different sources such as citizen scientists, museums, herbaria and researchers.

B-Cubed aims to address this challenge by transforming biodiversity monitoring into an agile and responsive process. The project works closely with existing biodiversity initiatives to identify and address policy needs. It leverages the concept of data cubes to standardise access to biodiversity data using the Essential Biodiversity Variables framework. These cubes are the basis for models and indicators of past, current and future biodiversity. The models will be accessible to users in real-time and on-demand in a cloud computing environment, delivering information on biodiversity status and change. To ensure its results can be reused, the project creates exemplar automated workflows for modelling using biodiversity data cubes and for the calculation of change indicators. The effectiveness of B-Cubed’s solutions is demonstrated in four case studies, varying in geographic extent, biodiversity richness and data availability.

The project PI(s)

Project coordinator: Dr Quentin Groom,  Meise Botanic Garden

Partners:

Meise Botanic Garden, The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, )The Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), University of Bologna (UNIBO), Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (JLU), Ovidius University of Constanța (UOC), South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), Stellenbosch University (SU),Pensoft Publishers (PENSOFT), German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA), University of Aveiro (UAVR), La Trobe University (LTU).

Researchers from our lab involved in the project

Lina M. Estupinan-Suarez

Miguel Fernandez

Henrique Pereira

Duration of the project: From March 2023 to August 2026 (42 month)

Funding information: Funded by the European Union: B3 (Biodiversity Building Blocks for policy) receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme (ID No 101059592).

Project website: https://b-cubed.eu/

The abandonment of agricultural land in Southern Europe presents both challenges and opportunities for biodiversity and habitat restoration. While such abandonment can promote the regeneration of native vegetation and the creation of new habitats, it can also exacerbate human-wildlife conflicts, especially in areas where free-ranging livestock are still present. Understanding the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of livestock and wild ungulates in these landscapes is crucial for evaluating their habitat preferences and interactions.

This PhD project aims to assess the impact of domestic livestock on wildlife within the Peneda-Gerês National Park in Northern Portugal. This region has undergone significant depopulation and agricultural abandonment over the past 60 years, yet free-ranging cattle and horses continue to be prevalent. This situation raises concerns about habitat degradation, resource competition, and altered habitat use patterns that could adversely affect wildlife, particularly wild ungulates.

Building on an extensive camera trap study, this research will investigate habitat preferences, occupancy dynamics, and spatial relationships between domestic livestock and wild ungulates using dynamic occupancy models. The project will examine whether cattle and horses share habitats with wild ungulates and how livestock might influence wildlife distribution, with a focus on potential impacts related to feeding strategies and resource availability.

To assess habitat quality and resource availability, the study will combine plant biomass data, collected through systematic sampling, with high-resolution remote sensing data. This approach aims to predict vegetation biomass across various types and correlate these predictions with functional trait data on plant quality, such as nutritional content and palatability. These correlations will be analyzed alongside herbivore occurrence and abundance data from camera traps to evaluate resource competition and interaction dynamics.

Additionally, the project will analyze food webs and energy flows within the study area to quantify the effects of domestic livestock on trophic hierarchies and feeding ecology. By integrating these ecological and landscape-scale analyses, this study aims to enhance understanding of domestic-wildlife interactions and inform strategies for wildlife conservation and sustainable landscape management in regions affected by land abandonment.

Zuleger A, Perino A, Wolf F, Wheeler H, Pereira H (2023). Long-term monitoring of mammal communities in the Peneda-Gerês National Park using camera trap data. Version 1.5. Biodiversity Data Journal. Sampling event dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/rah33j

Participants: Zuleger, Annika M.

Duration: 2021 – 2025

Funding: The project receives no specific funding.

Established in 1971, the Peneda-Gerês National Park in Northern Portugal was created to safeguard soil, water, flora, and fauna, while preserving its significant value for both human and natural resources. As Portugal’s only national park, it supports a rich diversity of habitats, some of which are designated as Special Areas of Conservation under the Habitats Directive. Within the park, approximately 235 vertebrate species have been identified, including 200 that are threatened or protected, such as the Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus), which faced near extinction in the last century.

Historically, agro-pastoral activities were common in the park’s northern region. However, demographic declines and emigration over the past 60 years have led to agricultural abandonment, creating opportunities for passive rewilding and wildlife resurgence. This makes the park an ideal location for studying the effects of land abandonment and rewilding on ecosystems and wildlife communities.

Since 2015, our research group has been monitoring these land-use changes and their impact on wildlife through a comprehensive, long-term project. This monitoring effort encompasses weather and climate data, vegetation and land-use information from aerial imagery, and animal population data from camera traps. Our objective is to compile this extensive dataset into a publicly accessible database, which will support a wide range of ecological and monitoring studies.

The park also serves as a valuable educational and research site for master’s students and PhD candidates, fostering various conservation and ecological projects that address diverse focus areas and taxa.

Participants: Zuleger, Annika M.; Jörger-Hickfang, Theresa; Pereira, Henrique M.

Duration: 2015 – on-going

Funding: The project receives no specific funding.

Halting and reversing biodiversity loss is the main goal of conservation biology and it is the main objective of Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Rewilding is an innovative and process-oriented approach that aims to strengthen the adaptive capacity of ecosystems by (re)establishing ecological processes to enhance biodiversity. Rewilding projects are gaining support as an approach that reconciles nature conservation and ecosystem restoration with society and economy. Although a few studies proposed indicators for the ecological assessment of rewilding, empirical evidences are still scarce. Monitoring changes in mammal community is a key indicator for measuring the effect of rewilding as they are an integral part of the trophic complexity due to their top-down effect and their dominant interactions on regulation and functioning of ecosystems. However, traditional monitoring methods for mammals, such as camera trapping could be tedious and expensive due to vandalism, logistics and monetary investment. We need more efficient, replicable and easy to implement tools to monitor the long-term biodiversity changes across time and space. Fortunately, upcoming innovative techniques, such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, have proven to be a valuable tool for biodiversity assessment and are revolutionising how we monitor biodiversity. eDNA metabarcoding consists in the identification of multiple taxa via next-generation sequencing using DNA from water or soil samples. It holds an immense potential to monitor aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity at much larger scales and more effectively than other methodologies such as camera-trapping.

In this project, we aim to implement eDNA as a biodiversity monitoring tool in the only rewilding site in Germany, the Oder Delta, which is a unique region with a rich mosaic of terrestrial, marine and fresh water ecosystems and is the study site of the project “Rewilding-DE” led by UFZ, iDiv and MLU. Rewilding-DE aims to assess the trajectory of rewilding using among others, camera traps.

With eDNA we will detect mammal communities and compare them with the information gained by camera traps. We aim to assess the feasibility of using eDNA instead of camera trapping in the future. To do so, we are collecting water, soil and mosquitoes’ samples in the same places where the cameras are. We are amplifying 12S and 16S locus and preparing a library for next-generation sequencing for mammal species identification. To our knowledge, this will be the first project to use eDNA at a rewilding site and could set a precedent for an efficient methodology for monitoring biodiversity changes in the long-term.

PIs: Maria Mendez Camarena, Sandeep Sharma, Luis Daniel Prada Salcedo, Martin Schlegel, Henrique Pereira.

Duration: 01.02.2023 until 31.12.2023

Funding: Support of iDiv funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – FZT 118, 202548816