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).

Past and on-going projects^[1], and initiatives such as the European partnership Biodiversa+ or the EU mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, have explored and/or demonstrated the potential of new technologies, tools and methods for in-situ biodiversity monitoring with potential for better accuracy of data, increased efficiency and wider scales for data collection. However, this potential is not fully integrated in current binding biodiversity monitoring schemes, which could benefit notably from the availability of increased data leading to more precise assessment of the status of ecosystems. These innovative solutions still need to be tested, operationalised and piloted in the context of the concrete implementation of the EU legislation.

Proposals should address Area A: Nature Restoration Regulation, namely the EU Pollinators Monitoring Scheme^[2], Area B: Soil Biodiversity for the Soil Monitoring Law or Area C: Water Framework Directive. The area (A, B or C) should be clearly indicated on the application. Proposals under all the 3 areas should:

• develop scalable approaches for biodiversity monitoring with a view to improve the cost effectiveness of legally binding monitoring schemes. Integrate synergically different technologies and methods and engage end-users to tailor the approaches to their needs;
• develop demonstration cases to test, operationalise and pilot different biodiversity monitoring approaches to fulfil practical implementation of monitoring needs under the EU legislation such as NRR, SML or the WFD; where possible, develop and test automated and real-time monitoring frameworks supported by the use of AI;
• assess and compare the different approaches regarding their potential scalability, existing gaps, limitations, or potential drawbacks;
• build and further advance on already identified methods, tools and/or technologies, as well as on their integration, for species identification and quantification, such as DNA approaches, to address the gaps for their cost-effective and practical application in monitoring frameworks under EU legislation;
• advance the use of genomic techniques in monitoring the abundance of species populations relevant for each Area (A, B or C), with a view to integrate them into indicator-based monitoring frameworks under the EU legislation.

Additionally, proposals under each area (A, B or C) should complete or substantially advance DNA libraries as indicated, including the development of additional markers if established standard DNA barcoding markers do not suffice for species level identification:

• under Area A, complete the DNA libraries for key pollinator groups (bees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths), and substantially advance for other relevant groups of pollinating insects (such as flies other than hoverflies, wasps, beetles, ants, etc);
• under Area B, complete the DNA libraries for the main groups of fungi and bacteria and substantially advance in the DNA libraries for archaea, protists and other relevant soil organisms;
• under Area C, complete the DNA libraries for biological quality elements under the WFD (e.g., fish, macroinvertebrates, phytobenthos including in particular diatoms, phytoplankton, macrophytes, macroalgae, and angiosperms).

Proposals should build on the results of previous and ongoing projects and initiatives relevant to biodiversity monitoring, such as the European Biodiversity Observation and Coordination Centre (EBOCC), envisaging enough resources to collaborate with them to provide an effective integration of different methods and technologies.

Concrete efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of the funded project is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable), exploring workflows that can provide “FAIR-by-design” data, i.e., data that is FAIR from its generation. Possibilities offered by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and by relevant European research infrastructures such as eLTER^[3] should be considered where relevant.

In order to increase synergies and the impact of the projects, all proposals selected for funding should form a cluster and are expected to participate in common networking and joint activities, including with projects from other calls where deemed appropriate. These activities should be included in a dedicated work package, having sufficient budget allocated to it. These activities may include:

• a common dissemination and communication strategy;
• common Data Management Strategy and Common Policy Strategy (including joint policy briefs);
• thematic workshops/trainings/working groups on issues of common interest (e.g. data management and exchange);
• close cooperation with the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD)^[4] and its Science Service, including participating in answering science to policy requests.

[1] E.g. EuropaBON, MAMBO, BGE, etc.

[2] EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme, i.e. the pollinator monitoring method stipulated by the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2188.

[3] https://elter-ri.eu/.

[4] https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/biodiversity-knowledge-centre_en