Methods of habitat reports’ evaluation

2020

A key success factor of the Copernicus programme is to ensure the acceptance of services by users. This acceptance and further adoption is based on high quality products that meet the specific information requirements of the user. In the realm of biodiversity monitoring and reporting on conservation status of Natura 2000 habitats, such products must meet different needs of local site manager and national environmental agencies, up to European authorities. Hence, the quality of these upcoming Earth observation based technologies must be validated in a pre-operational phase. The case of the MS.MONINA project shows the necessity to streamline the role of different stakeholders in the whole service delivery process. This process is described in depth, taken from the service validation in Sierra Nevada and Andalusia (Spain), showing potentials and limitations of the developed validation protocol and highlighting methodological, technical and scientific achievements obtained during this process.

2004

The «Carta della Natura» (Mapping of Nature) Project initiative evaluates the state of the natural environment in Italy, estimating two components, the natural value and the environmental vulnerability, to two main scales of analysis, 1:250,000 (Landscape Units as reference territorial patterns) and 1:50,000 (Habitats).

Fitosociologia vol. 44 (2)suppl. 1: 23-28, 2007

A succinct review of the application of the Habitats Directive in Portugal is presented. Since 1971 until 2000 Portugal has defined approximately 8,8% of its territory as national protected areas. With the application of the Habitats Directive nature conservation policies extended to more than 17,4 % of the territory increasing by 98% and the knowledge on vegetation community's habitats was certainly deepened. Including special protection areas (Birds Directive) the Portuguese territory under one or more conservation status totals 21,5%. Finally, the support given by the Portuguese Phytosociology Association -ALFA in the detailed description of the Directive habitats is divulged, showing the importance, usefulness and efficacy of phytosociologic studies.

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, 2008

Revista INVI, 2010

Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto

One decade and a half after being proclaimed, the Habitat Directive has been largely implemented in most of the EU member states under various approaches and with different degrees of intensity. The high contribution to European biodiversity provided by the Spanish territories, along with extensive mountainous areas with low population densities and the engagement in safeguarding biological and ecological patrimony exhibited by a large part of the society and its governments have led to the design of a vast Natura-2000 network in Spain. At present, it includes 23.6% of the national territories which represent 24.7% of total EU network and the proportion of Annex I habitats types incorporated to protected areas embody 30.22% when referred to the total existing in the country. Under these circumstances, naturalistic evaluation appears as an important task for vegetation scientists and some criteria and scales are commented. In this sense undertaking the development of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes, where landowners collaborating to environmental welfare will be rewarded with money, becomes a viable contrivance to political managers.

Journal of Environmental Management, 2014

The aim of this study is to present a methodology to support decision makers in the choice of Natura 2000 sites needing an appropriate management plan to ensure a sustainable socio-economic development. In order to promote sustainable development in the Natura 2000 sites compatible with nature preservation, conservation measures or management plans are necessary. The main issue is to decide when only conservation measures can be applied and when the sites need an appropriate management plan. We present a case study for the Italian Region of Umbria. The methodology is based on a multicriteria approach to identify the biodiversity index (BI), and on the development of a human activities index (HAI). By crossing the two indexes for each site on a Cartesian plane, four groups of sites were identified. Each group corresponds to a specific need for an appropriate management plan. Sites in the first group with a high level both of biodiversity and human activities have the most urgent need of an appropriate management plan to ensure sustainable development. The proposed methodology and analysis is replicable in other regions or countries by using the data available for each site in the Natura 2000 standard data form.

2015

The «Carta della Natura » (Mapping of Nature) Project initiative evaluates the state of the natural environment in Italy, estimating two components, the natural value and the environmental vulnerability, to two main scales of analysis, 1:250,000 (Landscape Units as reference territorial patterns) and 1:50,000 (Habitats). The role of this project is of a major importance in environmental planning and monitoring, at different administrative scales, from national to local This paper presents the results of the application of the methodology used for the assessment process of the Habitats in the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park (NE of Italy). The choice of a protected area as a test for the methodology is dictated by the possibility to introduce a wide number of ecological indicators in the open model that is used, thanks to the good amount of data collected by the Park Authority in the past 10 years. In particular, a new indicator, the Biodiversity Erosion Risk (BER) for the entire flo...