Reconciling agricultural production with biodiversity conservation - Группа авторов

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classes (genetic composition, species populations, species traits, community composition, ecosystem function and ecosystem structure) with 21 EBV candidates. The EBVs are defined as the derived measurements required to study, report and manage biodiversity change. The EBVs should broker between monitoring initiatives and decision makers.

      Some lessons can be learnt from the various experiences of running monitoring schemes and surveys at the supranational level. The first is that setting up a monitoring scheme takes time. Setting up large-scale surveys from planning to execution takes a few years, and this is the case of all surveys described in this chapter. Preparing the sampling scheme, the survey protocol, identifying the funding bodies, running contracts, finding surveyors, actually running the survey and finally preparing the final database and a first analysis of the data easily takes three to five years, and more if, as in the case of birds and butterflies, national schemes have to be set up individually. Therefore, the operational phase should start as soon as the knowledge gap is identified.

      Secondly, the role of volunteers is essential. Whether skilled ornithologists and entomologists participating in counts, or people willing to use apps to communicate species and location of plants and animals, biodiversity monitoring cannot occur without volunteers. The cost for monitoring would simply be too high if tens of thousands of volunteers needed to be paid. Moreover, Schmeller et al. (2009) show that volunteer-based schemes can yield unbiased results, if surveys are appropriately designed and the number of volunteers is sufficiently high. In this regard, the raising awareness that biodiversity is under threat will hopefully convey growing interest into active participation in surveys.

      The potential of new technologies is high and not yet fully exploited. We can expect in a near future much higher capacity of automatic recognition of plants and animals, improved algorithms for processing images sent by smartphones, higher availability of centralized databases, platforms to store and retrieve information. This will greatly reduce the time needed to be spent on the ground (e.g. taking photos of plants rather than recognizing in the field each single species), but planning, post-processing and maintenance of the infrastructure will still take a considerable share of resources.

      Lastly, there is a point that is often undervalued: taxonomy. In order to correctly identify a specimen, a reference must exist, and species must have been named and classified. Moreover experts must be sufficiently trained to correctly classify specimens, and research on this topic should be reported correctly. It is recognized that taxonomy especially for insects and micro-organisms is not complete (FAO, 2016; Audisio, 2017), that there is a lack of taxonomists and experts with 10–15 years of experience in recognizing species (FAO, 2016), that taxonomic research is often lacking accurate and replicable taxonomic identification (Packer et al., 2018). Also in this case the important role of amateur taxonomists is recognized.

      In conclusion, three main pillars can be identified in the complex architecture of (farmland) biodiversity monitoring: the experts, who hold the scientific knowledge of biodiversity and tools to measure it; the decision makers and funding bodies, who take decisions about what to monitor and support monitoring activities and monitoring architecture; and the citizens, essential in information recording.

      It is clear that the effort for reaching a sufficient level of biodiversity monitoring is a collective and specialised effort, that requires coordination among many actors at different levels. The improvement of scientific knowledge is supported by research funding, for example, under the EU Research and Innovation programmes (Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe). Moreover, bridging science and technology eases active citizenship involvement. Monitoring schemes can be set up on the basis of existing scientific knowledge, and improved at each survey round. It is a process that takes time, for example, the LUCAS grassland survey developed in approximately seven years from the discussions about the approach to take in 2015, to a first test survey in 2018, to an enlarged survey on 20 000 transects planned for 2022. The involvement of scientific communities (e.g. birds, lepidoptera, pollinators) holding the necessary knowledge about individual taxa or habitats is key. Coordination and support provided by governance bodies (national ministries, EU bodies) is needed to provide the framework for the implementation of the surveys (e.g. funding, coordination) and to secure their repetition through time.

      A European Union Strategy for Sustainable Development (Commission’s proposal to the Gothenburg European Council), COM(2001)264 final https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52001DC0264&from=EN.

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