Speaker
Description
To protect biodiversity and mitigate its loss, a growing suite of policies have been implemented from global to local scales over recent decades. Within the European Union, multiple legislative frameworks aim to protect key species and habitats, control invasive alien species (IAS), reduce biodiversity loss, and conserve pollinator communities. A central requirement across these policies is the assessment of species status and trends by Member States (MS). Here, we analyse data associated with five species lists covered by the Nature Directives, the IAS Regulation, EU Red Lists, and the Pollinators Initiative (PI), focusing on species overlap, taxonomic coverage, and spatial and temporal distribution. Across the assessed lists, 16 MS are required to report on more than 500 species, with Spain having the highest reporting obligation (1,107 species). Using billions of records of open data published through GBIF, and reducing its dimension with the occurrence cube approach (i.e., SQL grouping), we observed an exponential increase over time in data availability for some, but not all, policy frameworks. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) shows the highest number of species occurrences, followed by the Birds Directive. However, disparities in data availability persist, with already data-poor species falling further behind. In terms of temporal patterns, we identified a unimodal distribution of records for the Habitats Directive (HD), IAS, and PI, and a bimodal distribution for the Birds Directive (BD), MSFD, and EU Red List. Overall, the increasing demand for biodiversity assessments—both spatially and temporally—alongside the expanding number of policy obligations, highlights the need for strategic national planning and targeted support to MS. This should take into account the growing volume of species demands and data required for effective policy reporting.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
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