Reconciling agricultural production with biodiversity conservation. Группа авторов
The extraordinary component of PECBMS are the thousands volunteers who count the birds in the field, each year, according to a methodology standardized at national level. The data are sent to the national offices, where, using TRIM software made available by PECBMS (van Strien et al., 2001; Statistics Netherlands, 2017), calculate the national species indices and trends. PECBMS combines national species indices with supra-national indices for individual species for the European Union and its main regions (new and old European Union, and West, South, North, Central and East Europe), plus Europe as a whole. All indices are annually updated, and EU indices are regularly sent to and published by EUROSTAT7. Thirty-nine species compose the Farmland Bird Index (FBI, Table 2). These are common species, which are dependent from agroecosystems for feeding and nesting, and as such are considered to be a descriptor of the state of agroecosystems. The index is a composite, multispecies index calculated using Monte Carlo simulations as described in Soldaat et al. (2017).
Table 2 Species composing the EU farmland bird index
| Alauda arvensis | Emberiza melanocephala | Passer montanus |
| Alectoris rufa | Falco tinnunculus | Perdix perdix |
| Anthus campestris | Galerida cristata | Petronia petronia |
| Anthus pratensis | Galerida theklae | Saxicola rubetra |
| Bubulcus ibis | Hirundo rustica | Saxicola torquatus |
| Burhinus oedicnemus | Lanius collurio | Serinus serinus |
| Calandrella brachydactyla | Lanius minor | Streptopelia turtur |
| Carduelis cannabina | Lanius senator | Sturnus unicolor |
| Ciconia ciconia | Limosa limosa | Sturnus vulgaris |
| Corvus frugilegus | Melanocorypha calandra | Sylvia communis |
| Emberiza cirlus | Miliaria calandra | Tetrax tetrax |
| Emberiza citrinella | Motacilla flava | Upupa epops |
| Emberiza hortulana | Oenanthe hispanica | Vanellus vanellus |
Of the monitoring initiatives presented in this paper, this is the only one that has a wall-to-wall coverage of the European Union, with a sampling density sufficient to derive statistically meaningful information at different scales (EU, national, regional), on different ecosystem types (farmland, forest; montane birds and mire birds for North Europe indicators are under development) or climate change (Gregory et al., 2009).
The information is valuable and widely used, since it is considered that, being at the top of the food chain, birds are indicators of the environment’s health. The farmland bird indicator is to date the most widespread biodiversity indicator used in EU policies (impact indicator of the CAP8; condition indicator of the Monitoring and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services – MAES9), indicator frameworks (Streamlining European Biodiversity Indicators – SEBI10; agri-environmental indicators – AEIs11; OECD agri-environmental indicators12) and global assessments (e.g. FAO, 2019).
2.2 European breeding bird atlas
The EBCC has organized a second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2). This project, complementary to the PECBMS, brings information on spatial distribution and abundance of all bird species in Europe including European Russia and Turkey (www.ebba2.info). The outputs of the project which has collected field data from 2013 to 2017 are the maps of distribution and abundance of each species in a grid of 50 km×50 km, and maps of modelled probability of occurrence of selected species in a grid of 10 km×10 km. The atlas also provides maps of change in distribution in comparison with the 1980s, when the first atlas was produced. Information about the spatial distribution of species has been shown to have an extremely high value for policy, nature conservation and research (Herrando et al., 2019). The EBBA2 outputs will be published in 2020.
2.3 Butterflies
The experience of bird monitoring has paved the way to other initiatives aimed at planning and putting in place large-scale surveys. One of these is butterfly monitoring. Butterfly populations are in fact highly sensitive to environmental change, providing an early warning of impacts on ecosystems. Moreover, being insects, they are part of the food chain and they are also important pollinators. The process of establishing monitoring schemes in EU countries and improving the Grassland Butterfly Index is very similar to the PECBMS experience. Some countries had developed their own Butterfly Monitoring Scheme already in the nineties (e.g. Belgium – Flanders, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain – Catalonia), with the United Kingdom at the forefront, having started its monitoring activities in 1976 (Brereton et al., 2009).
Butterflies are counted along line transects, by experts or skilled volunteers. The counts take place several times a year (in the majority of cases 10–20 times), under well-defined weather conditions and times of the day. Transects