02 June 2023
In a study conducted in Western France, researchers made significant strides in understanding the delicate balance between weed management, crop production, and biodiversity conservation. Weeds are recognised as a major pest in agriculture and as such, have been intensively managed to reduce their competition for resources with crop plants. However,...
11 May 2023
Biodiversity and ecosystem functions provide crucial ecosystem services for human well-being, but changes in human activities have accelerated biodiversity loss. To address this decline, efficient methods and tools are needed to monitor biodiversity across spatial scales from the leaf level to the canopy, ecosystem, and global scales.
In that spirit,...
05 May 2023
Almost 50% of the global original forest cover has been lost in the last 8000 years mainly due to human activities. This decline, along with ecosystem fragmentation and reduction in habitat connectivity, are considered the major drivers of global biodiversity loss. Monitoring the biological diversity of forest ecosystems is crucial to prevent any further...
21 April 2023
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 goals and 169 targets that were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a global effort to eradicate poverty, preserve the planet, and achieve peace and prosperity for all by 2030. They apply to all countries and are designed to be integrated, with progress on one goal supporting progress on...
10 April 2023
With the rapid pace of anthropogenic environmental change, as well as global challenges such as climate change, and widespread biodiversity loss, there is a need to further develop our understanding of insects to maximise the benefits and minimise the harm associated with them. Entomology is essential for comprehending terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems...
04 April 2023
The presence and variety of plants and insects, such as bees, are essential marks of biodiversity, ecosystem well-being, and agricultural production. Bee populations however are declining worldwide due to, among others, habitat loss, climate change, and agricultural intensification. Although the reasons behind this decline are well studied, determining...
30 March 2023
The understanding of how to restore and improve the resilience of agrifood systems could be enhanced by considering them as social-ecological systems, encompassing all living beings and their dynamic interactions with the earth system. Such a perspective calls not only for an interdisciplinary approach but also a transdisciplinary and transformative...
17 February 2023
Studies in the field of remote sensing of biodiversity are increasing, accompanied by the development of a variety of approaches and methodologies to better assess multiple dimensions of biodiversity in different ecosystems. One such approach is the Spectral Variation Hypothesis (SVH) which proposes that the pixel-to-pixel variability of the spectral...
10 February 2023
Agri-environment schemes (AESs) are often developed and implemented in order to mitigate the negative effects of intensive agriculture, conserve biodiversity on farmland and increase agricultural sustainability. Many such widespread AESs aim to maintain or create field margin habitats, such as flower strips or hedgerows. Their effectiveness however...
19 January 2023
With organic food increasing in demand due to health and environmental benefits, several questions remain unanswered. Do organic farmers generate higher profits? Will the cost of cultivation reduce to compensate for low yields? Can farmers practise as per the organic agriculture protocols and obtain certification? A recent paper co-funded by SHOWCASE...
12 January 2023
A SHOWCASE-funded paper “Measuring diversity from space: a global view of the free and open source rasterdiv R package under a coding perspective” presents a new R package - rasterdiv - to calculate diversity indices based on remotely sensed data, by discussing the theory behind the developed algorithms.
Ecology has recognised the variation of species...
05 January 2023
As we welcome the new year, we embark on a retrospective journey to appreciate the SHOWCASE biodiversity research produced thus far, starting with “rasterdiv—An Information Theory tailored R package for measuring ecosystem heterogeneity from space: To the origin and back”.
This co-funded SHOWCASE paper, published in the Methods in Ecology and Evolution,...