BIODIVERSITY

BIOSCORE
AT A GLANCE Title: Biodiversity Impact Assessment Using Species Sensitivity Scores Instrument: Specific Targeted Research Project FP6 Total Cost: 1.576.152 EC Contribution: 911.169 Duration: 36 months Start Date: 1/02/2006 Consortium: 9 partners from 6 countries Project Coordinator: ECNC-European Centre for Nature Conservation (the Netherlands) Project Web Site: http://www.bioscore.eu; www.ecnc.org/bioscore Key Words: Community policies, 2010 target, Biodiversity impact assessment, Multispecies approach, Species sensitivity, Habitat suitability.

THE CHALLENGE
Despite the progress in implementing biodiversity indicators at European level, it is still difficult to quantify the impact of pressures from various drivers on components of Europes biodiversity. The BioScore project is addressing this requirement by developing a tool (database) that contains information on the ecological preferences of individual species, in relation to individual sectoral pressures and to selected Community policies. This tool is applied for assessing impacts and the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation policies as well as for forecasting future impacts.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES
BioScore aims to develop a cost-effective tool that allows for monitoring and assessing the impacts of key drivers and pressures from Community policies on biodiversity (species) with the ultimate aim of helping to halt the loss of biodiversity in the EU by 2010. Specific objectives are to build a European database with ecological preferences of individual species in relation to individual sectoral pressures and selected Community policies; apply the tool for assessing the impacts of EU policies on biodiversity; apply the tool for analysing the effectiveness of European policy responses; apply the tool for modelling European-wide scenarios for selected drivers; integrate the tool into an existing common monitoring framework to assess the impact of selected pressures on biodiversity; propose incentives for a wide uptake of the tool.

METHODOLOGY
The assessment tool produced by BioScore has been developed in a series of steps. In the first step, environmental pressures (e.g. fragmentation) are derived from selected policy sectors (e.g. transport

EXPECTED RESULTS
sector) and related to Community policy instruments (e.g. Directives, regulations, etc). In the second step, species are linked to the identified environmental pressures through environmental variables (ecological characteristics such as optimal habitat type, dispersal capacity, etc.), which are then simplified to sensitivity scores (based on expert judgement). Subsequently, species data are used to detect likely impacts on biodiversity of Community policies. The impacts detection comes through changes in the distribution of species due to changing environmental variables resulting from pressures. Ultimately, the obtained results allow policymakers to evaluate the current BioScore is able to identify which species (groups) are likely to benefit and which species might be negatively affected by the stimulation of a certain policy measure. BioScore is able to locate, by using existing spatial data, the areas where these species occur in Europe at biogeographical and national level. BioScore is meant to be used by EU and national policymakers and other stakeholders (NGOs, research institutes, etc) to evaluate the current policy measures and plan alternative actions in the future.

and planned policy measures, and plan alternative actions in the future. PROJECT PARTNERS
ECNC-European Centre for Nature Conservation (Coordination), NL WI-Wetlands International, NL Alterra - Green World Research, NL NINA - Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, (Norway) NO UniRoma1 - University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Animal and Human Biology, IT EFI-European Forest Institute, FI EKBY-Greek Biotope/Wetland Centre, GR MNP-Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, NL INBO/BC Europe-Research Institute for Nature and Forest/Butterfly Conservation Europe, BE