Tag: ecosystem services

Values and dependence of society on pollinators: Pensoft joins the EU project VALOR

VALOR is to prompt better understanding of our relationship with pollinators. Pensoft will lead activities related to co-developing tools for expanding engagement and interaction, and support communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities.

Animal pollinators have become a flagship for biodiversity conservation, largely due to their globally recognised role in supporting broader biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human well-being.

Despite this recognition and the widely acknowledged benefits of pollination, many of the pressures on pollinators persist. As a result, there is growing evidence of localised yet significant deficits in pollination services, affecting both crop pollination and other communities.

Coordinated by Dr Tom Breeze (University of Reading) and funded by Horizon Europe, VALOR is a multi-actor project that will develop a comprehensive, systems-based approach to gaining a deeper understanding of the cascading impacts of pollinator shifts from flower to fork and beyond.

The project will examine the effects of pollinator shifts on ecosystems, farm businesses, and local communities through primary research and modelling.

VALOR’s coordinator Dr Tom Breeze (UREAD) gave an introductory presentation during the project’s kick-off meeting in February (Reading, United Kingdom). 

The project aims to empower actors to develop a deeper comprehension of relationships with pollinators and will produce a range of co-developed tools for landowners, businesses, and policymakers.

These tools will facilitate a better understanding of pollination-related risks and enable users to conduct their own studies by replicating the project’s methods and applying its models. To ensure comprehensive data collection without compromising scale, VALOR will adopt a systems-based approach, employing a series of in-depth case studies in focal regions to assess the importance of pollinators.

VALOR launched in January 2025 and will be running until the end of 2028.

To achieve its goals the VALOR project has six objectives: 

  1. Co-develop a better understanding of stakeholder knowledge needs around pollinators.
  2. Better understand the dependence of society and the economy on pollinators.
  3. Measure and model the cascading impacts of plant-pollinator networks on ecosystems and human well-being.
  4. Explore the consequences of pollinator loss through value chains.
  5. Forecast the resilience of pollinator networks and human benefits under future conditions.
  6. Co-develop tools to engage and empower actors about pollinator conservation.

Pensoft’s role

Building on its experience in communication, dissemination, and exploitation of results, Pensoft will focus on maximising the project’s impact and long-term legacy. This involves a broad scope of activities, including the development of the project’s visual identity and online presence, as well as the translation of research findings into policy recommendations.

As a leader of the work on co-developed tools for expanded engagement and interaction, Pensoft will support the development of a spatially explicit tool to allow users to explore the fine-scale changes in pollinator abundance and diversity, as well as pollination services resulting from a change in landscape management.

Moreover, Pensoft will assist the VALOR project in contributing to the Safeguard Knowledge Exchange Hub (Safe-Hub).

Pensoft will also facilitate collaboration opportunities with other projects, leveraging its expertise in numerous EU-funded projects. These efforts will be directed towards VALOR’s sister project: BUTTERFLY (101181930).

International consortium

The VALOR consortium comprises partners from thirteen European institutions, along with three associated partners, including China and Australia.

The consortium spans a wide and diverse range of scientific disciplines, from pollinator ecology, sociology, and economics to stakeholder engagement and communications. 

  1. University Of Reading (UREAD)
  2. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
  3. Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (ALU-FR) 
  4. Jagiellonian University (UJ) 
  5. The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
  6. Wageningen University (WU)
  7. Lund University (ULUND)
  8. University of La Laguna (ULL)
  9. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU)
  10. The University of Helsinki (UH)
  11. Pensoft Publishers (PENSOFT) 
  12. World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC)
  13. European Landowners’ Organization (ELO)
  14. University of New England (UNE)
  15. China West Normal University (CWNU)
  16. Beijing Forestry University (BJFU)

The VALOR project website is coming soon!

In the meantime, follow the project’s progress via its social media channels on BlueSky and LinkedIn.

Promoting sustainable agriculture for pollinators: Pensoft joins the EU project AGRI4POL

The new Horizon project is to assist the transition of agriculture to a positive force for biodiversity, crop pollination services, ecosystems and people. Pensoft will lead the communication, dissemination, exploitation and synergies with other projects.

Threats to pollinators and pollination services that support agriculture and provide benefits to people are a worldwide problem, recognized by intergovernmental scientific assessments, national or transnational initiatives as well as policies.

Intensive agriculture is among the principal threats to pollinator biodiversity and the crop pollination services that pollinators provide. Moreover, typically crop breeding has tended to overlook the benefits of pollination for sustained crop yields in favour of other crop traits.

Coordinated by Dr. Adam Vanbergen (INRAE) and funded by Horizon Europe, the AGRI4POL project takes an ambitious and achievable interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to achieve a transition towards sustainable pollinator-friendly farming.

AGRI4POL kick-off meeting (February 2025, Brussels, Belgium).

The project aims to deliver an integrated state-of-the-art analysis of the crop – farming system – pollinator interplay across levels of biological organisation from the crop gene to the agroecosystem. 

AGRI4POL launched in January 2025 and will be running until the end of 2028.

To achieve its goals, AGRI4POL project has outlined six objectives:

  1. Establish and work with a multi-actor community to drive the transition towards more pollinator friendly farming systems and value chains.
  2. Evaluate genetic diversity of crop floral traits governing pollinator interactions to stimulate breeding of pollinator-smart varieties.
  3. Find out how pollinator-crop relationships are modified by intra- and interspecific crop diversification in space and time.
  4. Optimise ecological infrastructures (EI = landscape features, non-crop habitats) for crop pollination, pollinator biodiversity and multiple ecosystem benefits.
  5. Assess the social, economic and environmental opportunities and obstacles presented by pollinator friendly farming options to understand their feasibility and acceptability. 
  6. Evaluate the influence of the policy landscape and the practitioner awareness of the benefits and challenges of pollinator-friendly farming at [sub]national, European and international scales.
AGRI4POL’s coordinator Dr. Adam Vanbergen (INRAE) gave an introductory presentation during the project kick-off meeting in Brussels (February 2025, Belgium).

Pensoft’s role

Building on its experience in communication, dissemination, and exploitation of results, Pensoft will focus on maximizing the project’s impact and long-term legacy. This encompasses a wide array of activities, ranging all the way from building a project’s visual identity and online presence and creating a podcast to translating results into policy recommendations. Moreover, Pensoft will be facilitating collaboration opportunities with other projects, leveraging on its involvement in numerous EU-funded projects. As of now, Pensoft takes part in six EU Pollinator projects, which serves well to facilitate synergies.

International consortium

The AGRI4POL consortium comprises partners from fourteen European institutions along with five associated partners, including China. Consortium covers a wide diverse range of scientific disciplines spanning from pollinator ecology and agriculture to stakeholder engagement and communications. 

  1. INREA (France)
  2. INRAE Transfert (France) 
  3. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ (Germany)
  4. The University of Reading (United Kingdom)
  5. Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands)
  6. Lund University (Sweden)
  7. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spain)
  8. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany)
  9. Pensoft Publishers (Bulgaria)
  10. Global Change Research Institute – Ustav Vyzkumu Globalni Zmeny Av Cr Vvi (CzechGlobe) (Czech Republic)
  11. Université de Mons (Belgium)
  12. University of Ljubljana – Univerza v Ljubljani (Slovenia)
  13. Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy)
  14. WCMC LBG – UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (global)
  15. Associació Paisatages Vius – Living Landscapes (global)
  16. Maisadour Semences Romania SRL – MAS Seeds (Romania)
  17. Confederazione Italiana Agricoltori (Italy)
  18. Eidgenoessisches Departement fuer Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung (WBF-Agroscope) (Italy)
  19. Swiss Association for the Development of Agriculture and Rural Areas (Switzerland)
  20. Institute of Apicultural Research – Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences 
  21. China West Normal University 
  22. Gansu Agriculture University

The AGRI4POL project website is coming soon!

In the meantime, follow the project’s progress via its social media channels on BlueSky and LinkedIn.

Innovative tools for science communication: How to increase your research impact

At the 5th ESP Europe conference in Wageningen, Pensoft will lead a training session on effective science communication through open access publishing.

The Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) is a global network that connects ecosystem services scientists, practitioners, stakeholders, and policymakers at local, national, regional, and global scales. ESP enhances and encourages a diversity of approaches, while reducing unnecessary duplication of effort in the development of concepts and application of ecosystem services.

Starting in 2008, ESP organises annual international conferences, where experts share research progress and exchange ideas in the field of ecosystem services, strengthening cooperation among scientists and practitioners. Since 2015, global and regional conferences started taking place bi-annually, with the 5th ESP Europe conference taking place this year between 18 and 22 November in Wageningen, The Netherlands, under the theme ‘Ecosystem Services: One Planet, One Health’.

The ESP Europe conference will focus on the question of how the ecosystem services concept can address the challenges involved in delivering the global vision of One Health. It will also highlight the interdependence of health across various domains – human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health, and the health of the global environment.

In addition to the main event, the organisers are providing access to pre-conference trainings on Sunday, 17 November, one day before the official start of the conference. One of these focuses on science communication and its role in enhancing research impact. Titled “Innovative tools for science communication: How to increase your research impact”, this session will be hosted by Pensoft Publishers.

A communication and dissemination leader in a wide range of EU research projects, as well as an independent publishing company, Pensoft will introduce the participants to best practices in science communication, drawing examples from a project portfolio which covers ecosystems and biodiversity, agriculture and forestry, pollinators and more. This training activity will also highlight the integral role of open science in effective dissemination, showcasing the opportunities facilitated by Pensoft’s open-access journals, which promoting transparency, accessibility, and reusability of results. Overall, the session will provide an in-depth look into the interlinkage between effectively communicated research outputs and the benefits of openly published data.

The Pensoft team will share their experiences with projects such as  SELINA and SpongeBoost, both of which will also be presented in the scientific sessions and via a shared booth at the event.

Everyone who has already registered for the official programme can still add a training to their application using this link.

MAkiNg Technology work for moNitoring polliNAtors: Pensoft joins ANTENNA

Pensoft is to maximise the project’s impact by informing stakeholders about results and raising public awareness about pollinators.

Pensoft joins the newly funded Biodiversa+ project ANTENNA focused on making technology work for monitoring pollinators and is tasked with the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities. 

The overarching goal of ANTENNA is to fill key monitoring gaps through advancing innovative technologies that will underpin and complement EU-wide pollinator monitoring schemes, and to provide tested transnational pipelines from monitoring activities to curated datasets and enhanced indicators that support pollinator-relevant policy and end-users.

The ANTENNA project answers the BiodivMon call, which was launched in September 2022 by Biodiversa+ in collaboration with the European Commission. The BiodivMon call sought proposals for three-year research projects to improve transnational monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem change, emphasising innovation and harmonisation of biodiversity data collection and management methodologies, addressing knowledge gaps on biodiversity status and trends to combat biodiversity loss, and the effective use of existing biodiversity monitoring data. 

Supporting the work of Work Package #5: “Project coordination, and communication”, Pensoft is dedicated to maximising the project’s impact by employing a mix of channels to inform stakeholders about the results from ANTENNA and raise public awareness about pollinators.

Pensoft is also tasked with creating and maintaining a clear and recognisable project brand, promotional materials, website, social network profiles, internal communication platform, and online libraries. Another key responsibility is the development, implementation and regular updates of the project’s communication, dissemination and exploitation plans, that ANTENNA is set to follow for the next four years.

On 14-15 March 2024, ANTENNA held its official kick off meeting. Project partners came together in Halle, Germany for two days to outline objectives, discuss strategies, and set the groundwork for this venture.

Specifically, the combined expertise of the consortium will address the following objectives:

  1. Advance automated sample sorting and image recognition tools from individual prototypes to systems that can be adopted by practitioners
  2. Expand pollinator monitoring to under-researched pollinator taxa, ecosystems, and pressures
  3. Quantify the added value of novel monitoring systems in comparison and combination with ‘traditional’ methods in terms of cost effectiveness
  4. Provide a framework for integrative monitoring by combining multiple data streams and. The framework will also support the development of near real-time forecasting models as bases for early warning systems;
  5. Upscale local demonstrations into the implementation of large-scale transnational pipelines and provide context-specific guidance to the use of policy-makers and other users who might need to select monitoring methods and indicators.

Consortium*:

  1. Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany
  2. Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands
  3. Aarhus University, Denmark
  4. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
  5. University of the Aegean, Greece
  6. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
  7. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

*Pensoft Publishers is a subcontractor tasked by the UFZ with multiple communication, dissemination and exploitation activities as part of Work Package 5.

Stay up to date with the ANTENNA project’s progress on X/Twitter (@ANTENNA_project) and LinkedIn (/antenna-project).

Pensoft at the 7th European Congress of Conservation Biology as a publisher and Horizon project partner

At the Pensoft’s stand, delegates learned about the scientific publisher’s versatile open-access journal portfolio, as well as related publishing services and the Horizon project where Pensoft is a partner.

Between 17th and 22nd June 2024, Pensoft’s scholarly publishing and project teams joined the European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB), organised by the Society for Conservation Biology and hosted by the University of Bologna.

Here’s a fun fact: the University of Bologna is the oldest one still in operation in the world. It is also etched in history for being the first institution to award degrees of higher learning.  

This year, the annual event themed “Biodiversity positive by 2030” took place in the stunning Italian city of Bologna famous for its historical and cultural heritage, in a way building a bridge between the past of European civilisation and the future, which is now in our hands.

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At the Pensoft’s stand, delegates learned about the scientific publisher’s versatile open-access journal portfolio of over 30 journals covering the fields of ecology and biodiversity, as well as other related services and products offered by Pensoft, including the end-to-end full-featured scholarly publishing platform ARPHA, which hosts and powers all Pensoft journals, in addition to dozens other academic outlets owned by learned societies, natural history museums and other academic institutions.

In addition to its convenient collaborative online environment, user interface and automated export/import workflows, what ARPHA’s clients enjoy perhaps the most, are the various human-provided services that come with the platform, including graphic and web design, assistance in journal indexing, typesetting, copyediting and science communication.

Visitors at the stand could also be heard chatting with Pensoft’s Head of Journal development, Marketing and PR: Iva Boyadzhieva about the publisher’s innovative solutions for permanent preservation and far-reaching dissemination and communication of academic outputs that do not match the traditional research article format.

For example, the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal was launched in 2015 by Pensoft as an open-science journal that would publish ‘unconventional’ research outputs, such as Grant proposals, Policy briefs, Project reports, Data management plans, Research ideas etc. Its project-branded open-science collections are in fact one of the Pensoft’s products that enjoys particular attention to participants in scientific projects funded by the likes of the European Commission’s Horizon programme.

Another innovation by Pensoft that easily becomes a talking point at forums like ECCB, is the ARPHA Conference Abstract (ACA) platform, which is basically a journal for conference abstracts, where abstracts are treated and published much like regular journal articles (a.k.a. ‘mini papers’) to enable permanent preservation, but also accessibility, discoverability and citability. Furthermore, ACA has been designed to act as an abstracts submission portal, where the abstracts undergo review and receive feedback before being published and indexed at dozens of relevant scientific databases.

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At ECCB 2024, our team was also happy to meet in person many authors and editors, whose work has frequented the pages of journals like Nature Conservation, Biodiversity Data Journal, ZooKeys and NeoBiota, to name a few.

On Wednesday, delegates also got a chance to hear the talk by renowned vegetation ecologist at the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Editor-in-Chief at the Vegetation Classification and Survey journal: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dengler. He presented findings and conclusions concerning neophytes in Switzerland, while drawing comparisons with other European countries and regions.

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At this year’s ECCB, Pensoft took a stand as an active Horizon project participant too. At the publisher’s booth, the delegates could explore various project outputs produced within REST-COAST, SpongeBoost and BioAgora. Each of these initiatives has been selected by the European Commission to work on the mitigation of biodiversity decline, while aiming for sustainable ecosystems throughout the Old continent.

In all three projects, Pensoft is a consortium member, who contributes with expertise in science communication, dissemination, stakeholder engagement and technological development.

Coordinated by the Catalonia University of Technology UPC-BarcelonaTech and involving over 30 European institutions, REST-COAST has been working on developing tools to address key challenges to coastal ecosystems – all consequences of a long history of environmental degradation of our rivers and coasts.

Having started earlier this year, SpongeBoost is to build upon existing solutions and their large-scale implementation by implementing innovative approaches to improve the functional capacity of sponge landscapes. The project is coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and will be developed with the active participation of 10 partnering institutions from seven countries across Europe. 

In the meantime, since 2022, the five-year BioAgora project has been working towards setting up the Science Service for Biodiversity platform, which will turn into an efficient forum for dialogue between scientists, policy actors and other knowledge holders. BioAgora is a joint initiative, which brings together 22 partners from 13 European countries led by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).

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Still, REST-COAST, SpongeBoost and BioAgora were not the only Horizon projects involving Pensoft that made an appearance at ECCB this year thanks to the Pensoft team. 

On behalf of OBSGESSION – another Horizon-funded project, Nikola Ganchev, Communications officer at Pensoft, presented a poster about the recently started project. Until the end of 2027, the OBSGESSION project, also led by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and involving a total of 12 partnering organisations, will be tasked with the integration of different biodiversity data sources, including Earth Observation, in-situ research, and ecological models. Eventually, these will all be made into a comprehensive product for biodiversity management in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. 

On Tuesday evening, the CO-OP4CBD (abbreviation for Co-operation for the Convention on Biological Diversity) team: another Horizon Europe project, where Pensoft contributes with expertise in science communication and dissemination, held a workshop dedicated to what needs to be done to promote CBD activities in Central and Eastern Europe.

On the next day, scientists from the EuropaBON consortium: another project involving Pensoft that had concluded only about a month ago, held a session to report on the final conclusions from the project concerning the state and progress in biodiversity monitoring.

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You can find the detailed scientific programme of this year’s ECCB on the congress’ website. 

Use the #ECCB2024 hashtag on X (formerly Twitter) to relive highlights from the ECCB congress. 

Integration of ecosystem services in urban planning tools can directly contribute to the sustainability of ecosystems

Integrated ecosystem services can be a potent tool to inform and guide spatial decision-making.

Guest blog post by Zeynep Türkay

Ecosystem services’ (ES) integration into global policies is widely recognized as a hope for environmental sustainability, as they provide a robust framework for representing natural values. The role of healthy ecosystems in combating climate change-related risks and ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem services that are critical for human-natural life is well understood, and in this context, the protection and sustainability of Integrated ES areas, which represent the highest ecological functional areas in this sense, need to be highlighted. Integrated ES can be a potent tool to inform and guide spatial decision-making. However, presently, there is a need to improve the content of related conventional tools on how to introduce and involve their roles in decision-making processes.

A map of Istanbul showing the integrated ecosystem services potential of the current situation.
A map of Istanbul showing the integrated ecosystem services potential of the current situation.

Our paper, published in the journal One Ecosystem, investigates the incorporation of this problem, underlines ES significance as the Integrated ES, and transfers this information into spatial decision-making. The content of the paper discusses the potential contributions and limitations of the integration. It provides solid suggestions on how Integrated ES can be operationalized in Istanbul’s high-level plans.

Research article:

Türkay Z, Tezer A (2024) Contribution of integrated ecosystem services to urban planning tools: Can it be more functional for the sustainability of ecosystems? One Ecosystem 9: e121553. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.9.e121553

Moving towards a systems-based Environmental Risk Assessment for wild bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies: Pensoft joins PollinERA

Pensoft will lead the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities of the Horizon Europe project, which aims to reverse pollinator population declines and reduce impacts of pesticides.

The European Green Deal, the EU biodiversity strategy, the EU zero pollution action plan, and the revised EU pollinators initiative all indicate the need to protect pollinators and address insect and pollinator declines.

Plant protection products (PPP), also known as pesticides, have been identified as one of the primary triggers of pollinator decline. However, significant knowledge gaps and critical procedural limitations to current pesticide risk assessment require attention before meaningful improvements can be realised. The functional group is currently represented by only one species, the honey bee, which does not necessarily share other species’ biological and ecological traits.

Coordinated by The Social-Ecological Systems Simulation (SESS) Centre, Aarhus University and Prof. Christopher J. Topping, PollinERA (Understanding pesticide-Pollinator interactions to support EU Environmental Risk Assessment and policy) aims to move the evaluation of the risk and impacts of pesticides and suggestions for mitigation beyond the current situation of assessing single pesticides in isolation on honey bees to an ecologically consistent assessment of effects on insect pollinators.

This will be achieved through the development of a new systems-based environmental risk assessment (ERA) scheme, tools and protocols for a broad range of toxicological testing, feeding to in silico models (QSARS, toxicokinetic/toxicodynamic, and ALMaSS agent-based population simulations). 

Using a strong stakeholder co-development approach, these models will be combined in a One System framework for risk assessment and policy evaluation including an international long-term monitoring scheme for pollinators and pesticides. 

The One System framework builds on the recent roadmap for action on the ERA of chemicals for insect pollinators, developed within the IPol‐ERA project, funded by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The framework will expand the ERA tools currently used for honey bees to include wild bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies.

With an overall goal of reversing pollinator population declines and reducing the harmful impacts of pesticides, for the next four years, PollinERA will follow four specific objectives:

  1. Fill ecotoxicological data gaps to enable realistic prediction of the source and routes of exposure and the impact of pesticides on pollinators and their sensitivity to individual pesticides and mixtures.
  2. Develop and test a co-monitoring scheme for pesticides and pollinators across European cropping systems and landscapes, developing risk indicators and exposure information.
  3. Develop models for predicting pesticide toxicological effects on pollinators for chemicals and organisms, improve toxicokinetic/toxicodynamic (TKTD) and population models, and predict environment fate.
  4. Develop a population-level systems-based approach to risk and policy assessment considering multiple stressors and long-term spatiotemporal dynamics at a landscape scale and generate an open database for pollinator/pesticide data and tools.
Between 17 and 18 January 2024, experts from various realms of knowledge – from pollinator ecology, pesticide exposure and toxicological testing, to stakeholder engagement and communications – gathered in Aarhus, Denmark, to officially launch PollinERA. The two-day event seeded fruitful discussions on the project’s specific objectives, mission, methodology, outcomes and expected results.

With more than 20 years of experience in science communication, Pensoft is leading Work Package 6: Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation, that will ensure the effective outreach of PollinERA to its multiple target audiences. Based on the tailor-made communication, dissemination, exploitation and engagement strategies, Pensoft will provide a recognisable visual identity of the project, along with a user-friendly website, social media profiles, promotional materials, newsletters, infographics and videos. Pensoft will also contribute to the stakeholder mapping process and the organisation of various workshops and events.

To support the proactive, open-science transfer of results and scientific achievements, two PollinERA topical collections of articles will be established in Pensoft’s Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal (FESMJ) and the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal.

PollinERA’s coordinator Prof. Christopher J. Topping (The Social-Ecological Systems Simulation Centre, Aarhus University) gave a warm welcome during the kick-off meeting of the project in Aarhus, Denmark.

In a joint effort to maximise impact and ensure sustainability of results, PollinERA will unfold in close collaboration with the sister Horizon Europe-funded project WildPosh, where Pensoft is also leading the Communication, dissemination and exploitation work package. 

Coordinated by Prof. Denis Michez (University of Mons), WildPosh aims to significantly improve the evaluation of risk to pesticide exposure of wild pollinators, and enhance the sustainable health of pollinators and pollination services in Europe.

Collaboration mechanisms between the PollinERA and the WildPosh projects include joint communication activities and events, joint data management strategy and alignment of activities to solidify the quality of final outputs.

Prof. Denis Michez (University of Mons), the coordinator of PollinERA’s sister-project WildPosh, presented the missions, objectives and methods, as well as the similarities, differences and collaboration potential between the two projects at PollinERA’s kick-off meeting in Aarhus, Denmark.

“It is fantastic that the European Commission puts so much effort into preserving wild pollinators and the countless benefits they bring to our society! The One System framework will hopefully become a fundamental part for the environmental risk assessment of chemicals for insect pollinators. I am really looking forward to implementing this insightful project, in close collaboration with its sister project WildPosh, where Pensoft is leading the dissemination efforts as well.”

says Teodor Metodiev, Principal Investigator for Pensoft at both PollinERA and WildPosh.

The PollinERA consortium comprises partners from eight European countries that represent a diverse range of scientific disciplines spanning from pollinator ecology, pesticide exposure and toxicological testing, to stakeholder engagement and communications.

Consortium:
  1. Aarhus University
  2. Jagiellonian University
  3. Lund University
  4. University of Bologna
  5. Osnabrück University
  6. Institute of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences
  7. Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research
  8. BeeLife European Beekeeping Coordination
  9. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
  10. Pensoft Publishers
  11. Zip Solutions

Stay up to date with the PollinERA project’s progress on X/Twitter (@pollinERA_eu) and LinkedIn (/pollinera-eu).

Assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of chemical stressors on the health of wild pollinators: Pensoft joins WildPosh

  

Uncovering the hidden value of urban rivers: Study reveals community perceptions of ecosystem services

The case of the Zamora and Malacatos rivers in Loja, Ecuador

Guest blog post by Natalia Alvarado-Arias, Vinicio Moya-Almeida, Francisco Cabrera-Torres, and Andrea Medina-Enríquez

Urban rivers play a crucial role in providing ecosystem services that contribute to the social well-being and quality of life of urban inhabitants. However, rapid urbanization has led to the progressive degradation of these rivers, affecting their capacity to deliver these services and generating significant socioecological impacts. A groundbreaking study conducted in the Zamora and Malacatos Rivers in Loja, Ecuador, performed a participatory mapping of the non-monetary social values (both positive and negative) and their associated ecosystem services. This research, published in the journal One Ecosystem, aimed to understand community perceptions and preferences in the context of degraded landscapes, using a complementary analysis approach to traditional methods.

Oblique aerial photographs of the research area captured with unmanned aerial vehicles (2021). Left: Malacatos River. Right: Zamora River

The methodology employed in this study involved data collection and analysis using ArcGIS Survey123 Connect (ESRI 2020), a digital survey tool that facilitated easy data collection from participants. Additionally, The Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES 4.0) tool was utilized, integrating participatory survey data and environmental data to assess and map the social values associated with ecosystem services. This combination of technological tools allowed for comprehensive analysis and visual representation of the results.

The study findings revealed that the most relevant social values encompassed learning, aesthetics, therapy, displeasure, deficient and inaccessible infrastructure, and the threat of flooding. Different spatial patterns were identified for each of these social values, with the horizontal distance to green areas emerging as a significant environmental variable contributing to these patterns.

Spatial distribution of positive social values.

These findings enhance our understanding of the social values and preferences associated with ecosystem services in urban river contexts. Furthermore, they provide valuable insights for identifying areas of opportunity and conflict, informing community planning, and enabling effective management of the urban landscape. The significance of this study lies in its novel approach, considering non-monetary social values, and its application in a city in the Global South, where previous research has predominantly focused on the Global North.

The degradation of urban rivers and the resulting socioecological impacts are a growing concern worldwide. Rivers play a vital role in providing natural resources, species habitats, freshwater supply, and flood control, while also satisfying the social, spiritual, and recreational needs of local communities. However, the processes of rapid urbanization have transformed river ecosystems into monofunctional channels and open sewers, negatively impacting the quality of life of residents.

Spatial distribution of negative social values.

This study emphasizes the importance of considering social values and community preferences when assessing and managing urban rivers. By doing so, opportunities and conflicts can be identified, and management strategies can be developed that are socially accepted and supported. Active community participation is crucial in this process as it allows for the addressing of traditional viewpoints and power asymmetries in planning.

The study employed a participatory and community-based approach, utilizing surveys and digital mapping tools such as ArcGIS Survey123 Connect (ESRI 2020) and The Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES 4.0) to collect and analyze data from multiple social actors. This integration of technological tools and participatory methods allowed for a more comprehensive understanding of the social values and ecosystem services associated with urban rivers.

An urban river. Photo by alcides OTA used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

In summary, this groundbreaking study highlights the importance of urban rivers as providers of ecosystem services and their role in the quality of life of urban communities. By understanding and valuing the social and cultural aspects of river ecosystems, effective management strategies can be developed to promote the restoration and conservation of these critical natural resources. Active community participation is essential in achieving sustainable management of urban rivers and ensuring a prosperous future for future generations.

Research article:

Alvarado-Arias N, Moya-Almeida V, Cabrera-Torres F, Medina-Enríquez A (2023) Evaluation and mapping of the positive and negative social values for the urban river ecosystem. One Ecosystem 8: e101122. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.8.e101122

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The wealth below the waves of the North-East Atlantic: The first ever environmental-economic accounts for the OSPAR region

A new paper in One Ecosystem, marks the first attempt at compiling accounts aligned with the UN international standard (SEEA EA) at a regional sea scale.

A new paper makes significant achievements in the field of ecosystem accounting for the ocean by presenting the first attempt at compiling accounts aligned with the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) at a regional sea scale to reveal the wealth hidden below the waves.

Ecosystem Accounting offers a robust framework for quantifying and valuing ecosystem extent, condition, and services, enabling the identification of ecological degradation and the evaluation of economic activities’ risks and dependencies on the environment. The OSPAR Convention, committed to safeguarding the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic, has embraced the accounting for natural capital and ecosystem services, with the SEEA EA providing the international standard.

A map of the OSPAR Maritime Area, denoting sub-regions I to V, as defined by the OSPAR convention. Ecosystem Accounting was performed by seafloor type (A3 – A6), according to EUNIS classifications.

This research paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of the OSPAR region’s natural capital and ecosystem services. The study entailed the identification of open-access data, the production of accounts for selected ecosystems, valuation of their services and asset value, and the revelation of crucial challenges and invaluable lessons.

The ecosystem services included in the analyses were fish provisioning, carbon sequestration, and outdoor recreation across OSPAR contracting parties’ coastal and marine environments. This exercise shed light on the need to overcome challenges including the lack of fitting data at the regional level and the imperative for spatially explicit linkages and harmonization to expand ecosystem accounting. It also offers valuable recommendations, including a shift towards ecosystem-type-based data collection, harmonization of data among countries, and the establishment of systematic data collection practices to facilitate data sharing and standardization.

The Ecosystem Accounts framework followed. The figure illustrates the set of accounts forming the accounting system, in which the accounts are strongly interconnected and provide a comprehensive and consistent view of the ecosystems.

It is key to emphasize that this work represents an initial step towards progressing ecosystem accounting practices not only in the OSPAR region but can serve as overall guidance for other regions in first steps regional ecosystem accounting, and it shows that, even with limited data and incomplete time-series, accounts can be compiled.

As the world faces unprecedented environmental challenges, understanding and measuring our marine ecosystems and how they change are of paramount importance. This research sets the stage for transformative actions towards sustainable development and underscores the critical need for further advancements in regional ecosystem accounting.

Research article:

Alarcon Blazquez MG, van der Veeren R, Gacutan J, James PAS (2023) Compiling preliminary SEEA Ecosystem Accounts for the OSPAR regional sea: experimental findings and lessons learned. One Ecosystem 8: e108030. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.8.e108030

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One Ecosystem selected for inclusion in the Web of Science

“Not only does it mean that content is persistent in merit and quality, but that innovative research outputs are already appreciated within academia,” says Editor-in-Chief Prof Dr Benjamin Burkhard

Seven years after its official launch in May 2016, the One Ecosystem journal has successfully completed the rigorous quality and integrity assessment at Web of Science.

Scientific papers published in One Ecosystem from 2021 onwards will be indexed at the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), revealed the Indexing team at ARPHA Platform.

The news means that One Ecosystem might see its very first Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as early as 2024, following the latest revision of the metric’s policies Clarivate announced last July. According to the update, all journals from the Web of Science Core Collection are now featured in the Journal Citation Reports, and thereby eligible for a JIF.

“Giving all quality journals a Journal Impact Factor will provide full transparency to articles and citations that have contributed to impact, and therefore will help them demonstrate their value to the research community. This decision is aligned to our position that publications in all quality journals, not just highly cited journals, should be eligible for inclusion in research assessment exercises,” said back then Dr Nandita Quaderi, Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Vice President at Web of Science.

“We are happy to learn that Web of Science has recognised the value and integrity of One Ecosystem in the scholarly landscape. Not only does it mean that the scientific content One Ecosystem has been publishing over the years is persistent in merit and quality, but that innovative research outputs are already widely accepted and appreciated within academia.

After all, one of the reasons why we launched One Ecosystem and why it has grown to be particularly distinguished in the field of ecology and sustainability is that it provides a scholarly publication venue for traditional research papers, as well as ‘unconventional’ scientific contributions,”

comments Prof Dr Benjamin Burkhard, Executive Director at the Institute of Physical Geography & Landscape Ecology, Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) and founding Editor-in-Chief of One Ecosystem.

“These ‘unconventional’ research outputs – like software descriptions, ecosystem inventories, ecosystem service mappings and monitoring schema – do not normally see the light of day, let alone the formal publication and efficient visibility. We believe that these outputs can be very useful to researchers, as well as practitioners and public bodies in charge of, for example, setting up indicator frameworks for environmental reporting,”

says Prof Davide Geneletti, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of University of Trento, Italy, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of One Ecosystem.

“In fact, last year, we also launched a new article type: the Ecosystem Accounting table, which follows the standards set by the the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA). This publication type provides scientists and statisticians with a platform to publish newly compiled accounting tables,” 

adds Dr Joachim Maes, Policy analyst at the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of One Ecosystem.

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Previously, One Ecosystem has been accepted for indexing at over 60 major academic databases, including Scopus, DOAJ, Cabell’s Directory, CABI and ERIH PLUS. In June 2022, the journal received a Scopus CiteScore reading 7.0, which placed it in Q1 in five categories: Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Nature and Landscape Conservation; Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous); Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics.

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