Seminar series

Invited speakers cover a range of relevant topics in the EEFI monthly seminar series. Join the online seminars to learn about innovative ecological forecasting approaches being led by the European community.

All seminars take place at 1pm CET on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. Seminars take place on Zoom and registration links will be made available here and via our mailing list. Make sure you sign-up to our listserv to receive updates on upcoming seminars!

We welcome contributions from across the European ecological forecasting community and hope to showcase the diversity of disciplines, individuals and institutions involved in ecological forecasting across the continent. If you have something you’d like to share, email us at eco4cast.initiative@gmail.com.

Details of our upcoming seminars and recordings of past seminars can all be found below.

Schedule & registration for upcoming seminars

8th May 2024: Petteri Vihervaara (Finnish Environment Institute). Register here. The Essential Biodiversity Variables for improved biodiversity monitoring and modelling
11th September 2024: Details forthcoming
9th October 2024: Details forthcoming

Details about upcoming seminars

8th May: Petteri Vihervaara (Finnish Environment Institute)

“The Essential Biodiversity Variables for improved biodiversity monitoring and modelling“

Register here

ABSTRACT:

The significance of biodiversity data in society has grown significantly in recent years. Understanding biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is fundamental for an ecologically sustainable society, nature conservation, the sustainable use of natural resources, and as the basis of the green economy. International biodiversity agreements, the European Union’s biodiversity strategy and national and local decision-making in both public and private sectors require increasingly precise, up-to-date, and diverse information about nature.

The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has developed a framework for an integrated biodiversity monitoring system under the general concept of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), and remote sensing has been proposed as a flagship tool to monitor biodiversity through RS-based EBVs. The EBVs have been suggested as a concept to harmonize biodiversity monitoring and providing a balanced approach to cover all dimensions of biological diversity. In Europe, EuropaBON and Biodiversa+ have been promoting implementation of these concepts as an operational system for biodiversity monitoring.

Besides improved monitoring systems, it is also important to understand better how the state of biodiversity is changing. The future interests in biodiversity science relates with predicting biodiversity change and its direct and indirect drivers through the integration of state-of-the-art multi-sensor Earth Observation data, innovative in-situ (including citizen science) data. The integration of EBVs with a detection and attribution modelling framework will provide a way forward to understand better changes in ecosystems across the realms.

In this presentation Dr. Vihervaara will give a short overview of EBVs, with a special attention to possibilities of remote-sensing, and their integration with a detection-attribution modelling framework. In addition, an overview of the latest biodiversity monitoring actions in Europe and Finland, as well as globally among GEO BON will be presented.

Dr. Vihervaara is the director of the Finnish Ecosystem Observatory (FEO) project. His research interests include biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring, ecosystem functioning, and Earth observation applications, and sustainability science.