EuropaBON EBVs List Descriptions

The essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) are the minimum set of variables needed to quantitatively measure changes in biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery systematically over time and space, with an overarching role of standardising and coordinating biodiversity monitoring. The EBVs are inspired by the framework used by The Global Climate Observation System (GCOS) to monitor climate through the essential climate variables. This framework enables one to capture the multiple dimensions of biodiversity change over space and time and at different biological levels, from genes to entire ecosystems. The underlying drivers of the changes can be understood by combining EBVs with biophysical covariates such as data on habitat structure, weather and climate, etc. Modelling from in-situ observations, remote sensing, and data obtained from other novel techniques, including eDNA and AI, are central parts of the EBV workflow that fill gaps in the biodiversity databases. They are organised into six broad categories to cover taxa (species-focused) and ecosystems (ecosystem-focused) across the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms (Pereira 2013). These are the Genetic Composition EBVs, the Species Population EBVs, the Species Traits EBVs, the Ecosystem Structure EBVs, the Ecosystem Function EBVs, and the Community Composition EBVs.

Figure 1. List of species- (darker colours) and ecosystem-focused (lighter colours) EBV classes and their realms (Modified from Junker et al. 2023).

EuropabON has identified a set of 84 prioritised EBVs after an intensive 24-month stepwise review process, with stakeholders, experts, and end-users at the project's core to provide timely updated data to monitor biodiversity change across Europe. These fall into six policy domains: Birds Directive, Habitats Directive, Freshwater Directive, Marine Directives, Climate and Restoration Policy, and the Bioeconomy Strategy; are effective mechanisms to ensure integrated cross-sectional policies and can be used to derive metrics measuring ecosystem services. In addition, each EBV was selected to fulfil a set of criteria including scalability, adequate spatial and temporal resolution, feasibility and redundancy avoidance.

Figure 2. EBVs identified by EuropaBON that measure species, ecosystem structure or functions that may influence the provision of specific services defined by the System of Environmental-Economic-Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) broad ecosystem services categories. Some EBVs were slightly modified for visualisation purposes. (From from Junker et al. 2023).