Biodiversity Meets Data

ongoing

Biodiversity Meets Data - BMD - is a Single Access Point that provides managers of natural resources and policy makers with access to high-throughput biodiversity monitoring tools and AI driven taxon identification services, services to mobilise historical baseline and legacy data to FAIR data repositories, a data catalogue to all available biodiversity information, a suite of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) for data analyses for the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms, and a web-GIS data viewer to explore the data and VRE results. All data are harmonised across space-time-taxonomy and transformed into multi-dimensional data cubes that are analysed by the VREs. The VREs are co-designed with the stakeholder representatives to ensure that the VREs meet all requirements. The VREs include tools for a) biodiversity monitoring, b) identification and analysis of drivers of change, and c) projections of land cover and climate change on the distribution of species and habitats. The VRE results are presented as comprehensive products to the end users so that they can effectively be used to monitor biodiversity, address drivers of biodiversity loss, and plan, manage and expand protected areas, improve the conservation status of species and habitats, and comply to the reporting obligations under the EU nature directives based on up-to-date knowledge and solutions. BMD builds on a consortium of partners that are involved in the development of European research infrastructures and biodiversity monitoring projects, including eLTER (Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological Research), LifeWatch ERIC, MAMBO (Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity), BGE (Biodiversity Genomics Europe), B3 (Biodiversity Building Blocks for Policy, GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and ARISE (Authoritative and Rapid Identification System for Essential biodiversity information) among others.