Biodiversity Indicators
Monitoring biodiversity involves four main areas: land cover, soils, insects and birds.
Remote sensing provides valuable information about land coverage on a broad scale, but it is essential to complement these data with field surveys and observations that focus on the crucial roles of soil organisms, insects, and birds in maintaining biodiversity.
The integration of remote sensing data with field surveys is essential for a global understanding of biodiversity.
Remote Sensing
Essential for large-scale environmental monitoring
Remotely sensed data can be used to quantify a wide range of structural features, such as vegetation height, canopy cover, and forest structure, providing valuable information about the physical characteristics of ecosystems. The comprehensive understanding provided by remote sensing indicators spans from individual species dynamics to ecosystem-level services, underpinning decision-making processes for conservation, land management, and sustainable agriculture practices.
Soils
Essential for assessing the health and functionality of an ecosystem
Soil biodiversity indicators are particularly useful for monitoring the impacts of different types of land use and land management practices. They provide parameters for assessing the health and functionality of the ecosystem as a whole, from soil microbiology and fauna to the vertical profile of the ecosystem (e.g. soil organic matter), as well as the status of key ecosystem regulating services (e.g. soil fertility and nutrient cycling).
Insects
Essential to monitor ecosystem structure and stability
Particularly important in agricultural and forestry landscapes, these indicators are becoming critical tools for assessing the impacts of land-use change and environmental variability on ecosystem health and resilience. Fluctuations in insect diversity or abundance can serve as early indicators of shifts in ecosystem composition and health, while changes in community structure provide insights into ecosystem resilience to disturbances such as habitat loss or climate change.
Birds
Essential for measuring ecosystem pressure
Bird biodiversity indicators can be used as indicators of the overall health of ecosystems and biodiversity in different taxonomic groups, due to their sensitivity to environmental change. Monitoring the distribution of bird species,
biogeographical patterns and trends in population abundance is a good indicator of anthropogenic environmental change and the pressures exerted on an ecosystem.