EBONE

Wat is EBONE?

EBONE is an EU FP7 project. The key challenge of the EBONE project is the development of a cost effective system of biodiversity data collection at regional, national and European levels. The need for the project is to develop a system for a coherent system for data collection that can be used for international comparable assessments.

The OECD reports on the economies of countries and internatinal markets as well as on world developments. This can be done because financial and economic approaches and definitions in different parts of the world are comparable. This is not the case for biodiversity. All reporting and all assessments on biodiversity are hampered by the fact that the data used and the way they are collected and analysed is different forall countriesand NGOs. Conclusions can therefore not be generalised as is done for other fields such as economics and health. This project initiates common approaches and harmonisation of data from both field observations and earth observations. It willassess the existing approaches on their validity and their applicability starting with Europe, but expanding to other regions of the world.
The official objectives of the project are:

1.       The provision of a sound scientific basis for the production of statistical estimates of stock and change of key indicators that can then be interpreted by policy makers responding to EU Directives regarding threatened ecosystems and species;

2.       The development of a system for estimating past change but also for forecasting and testing policy options and designing mitigating management strategies for threatened ecosystems and species.

Moreover, we think it essential to link the scientific basis of the project to a sound institutional framework. This ensures continuity and long term collaboration between partners in the project. This network is open for other partners as well.

The end product should therefore be "a biodiversity observation network that is spatially and topically prioritized and a structure for an institutional framework allowing European and monitoring and a possible extension world wide including projections on trends based on reliable data and indicators”.

This is elaborated in the following working objectives:

We will link databases, which have currently remained isolated in order to increase their overall effectiveness. Quantitative comparisons will be made using matrices e.g. of remote sensed categories and their relationship with in situ habitat data. This is shown schematically in the figure above. 

The link with GEOSS, LTER and GBIF and Lifewatch

http://www.earthobservations.org/geoss.shtml

The Group on Earth Observations is coordinating efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS. GEO was launched in response to calls for action by the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries. These high-level meetings recognized that international collaboration is essential for exploiting the growing potential of Earth observations to support decision making in an increasingly complex and environmentally stressed world.

GEO is a voluntary partnership of governments and international organizations. It provides a framework within which these partners can develop new projects and coordinate their strategies and investments. As of February 2008, GEO’s Members include 72 Governments and the European Commission. In addition, 52 intergovernmental, international, and regional organizations with a mandate in Earth observation or related issues have been recognized as Participating Organizations.

In the GEOSS 10 year implementation plan it is stated that GEOSS “will unify many of the disparate biodiversity observing systems and create a platform to integrate biodiversity data with other types of information. Harmonisation of observations, real- or near real-time monitoring integration of information from in situ and space based observations will be advocated.”

EBONE focuses on this topic and will deliver a European contribution to the development of a global biodiversity observation system. It will build on existing information and design a system for future applications. We will strongly link thereforewith all that is already ongoing in different countries and regions.

One of the important steps is to carry out tests on linking the data from LTER (Long-term Ecosystem Research, http://www.lter-europe.ceh.ac.uk/index.htm) sites with data from nation-wide habitat monitoring programmes and EO observations.

The strength of the approach is that it builds on all knowledge and networks developed in recent European projects such as AlterNet, BioHab, BioPress and EuMon. It makes use of existing monitoring sites; it assesses their representativeness and includes the existing national monitoring systems. It will lead to a cost effective procedure for biodiversity monitoring by applying the most efficient indicators in a well balanced sampling programme.

We will make a link with GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (http://www.gbif.org/)

EBONE will contribute to GEO-BON as part of GEOSS and to the development of the LifeWatch Infrastructure by consolidating LTER activities and establishing methodologies for integrating data from in situ and remote sensing sources. LifeWatch (http://www.lifewatch.eu/) is a plan for a European infrastructure which has been developed within the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) process. It will create a distributed data and information system for research on the protection, management and sustainable use of biodiversity.