I.R. Geijzendorffer

• Msc PhD
• CEO at Louis Bolk Instituut

Organic farming is promoted to reduce environmental impacts of agriculture, but surprisingly little is known about its effects at the farm level, the primary unit of decision making. Here we report the effects of organic farming on species diversity at the field, farm and regional levels by sampling plants, earthworms, spiders and bees in 1470 fiel...

The EBONE project developed a method to monitor biodiversity over time in the whole of Europe. In this deliverable, a proof of practice for the developed methodology is presented through an analysis of the data collected. Field data have been collected from a sampling pool of 1km squares throughout Europe and three case study regions outside Europe...

Fourty percent of the EU land area is currently considered to be agriculturally managed, and there is growing attention to the environmental performance of farming practices. This involves the need for farm-scale monitoring programmes for sustainability, but their implementation is ampere by a number of difficulties such as the identification of in...

Long-term future development of European agriculture within the global market is highly uncertain, but can potentially have large impacts on the future of agricultural businesses, rural communities and amenities such as traditional landscapes and biodiversity. Despite great uncertainties it is of interest to explore the extent of these potential ch...

Global frameworks to guide consistent monitoring of changes in human–nature interactions across space and time are needed to better understand how healthy ecosystems support societies and to inform policy design. Monitoring Essential Ecosystem Service Variables (EESVs) can provide a comprehensive picture of how links between nature and people are c...

Conversion of semi-natural habitats, such as field margins, fallows, hedgerows, grassland, woodlots and forests, to agricultural land could increase agricultural production and help meet rising global food demand. Yet, the extent to which such habitat loss would impact biodiversity and wild species is unknown. Here we survey species richness for fo...

The Mediterranean Basin is a biodiversity hotspot. Wetlands make a key contribution to this status, but many of them remain outside the Ramsar network fifty years after the establishment of the Ramsar Convention. Here we evaluate the extent to which the Mediterranean Ramsar network covers wetlands of international importance for wintering waterbird...

Monitoring global biodiversity from space through remotely sensing geospatial patterns has high potential to add to our knowledge acquired by field observation. Although a framework of essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) is emerging for monitoring biodiversity, its poor alignment with remote sensing products hinders interpolation between field...

Plans are currently being drafted for the next decade of action on biodiversity— both the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union (EU). Freshwater biodiversity is disproportionately threatened and underprioritized relative to the marine and terrestrial b...

Ecosystems are complex and data-intensive systems, and the ecologists still struggle to understand them in an integrated manner. Models that miss key dynamics can possibly lead to fallacious conclusions about the ecosystem fate. To address these limits and encompass whole and realistic ecosystems, we develop here a qualitative model with the help o...

Climate change projections over the Mediterranean basin point towards an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events that will directly impact ecosystems resilience. In this study we evaluated future trends of soil loss in forestland in Catalonia (NE Spain) due to fires and vegetation dynamics, considering the potential future impacts of...

Wetlands are known to support diverse and unique species assemblages. Globally, but particularly in the Mediterranean basin, they are threatened by climate change and natural habitat loss. Despite an alarming decline of wetlands over the last century, standardised and systematic site assessments at large scale do not exist. Here, we perform an inte...

There is growing evidence of the inter‐relationships between ecosystems and public health. This creates opportunities for the development of cross‐sectoral policies and interventions that provide dual benefits to public health and to the natural environment. These benefits are increasingly articulated in strategy documents at national and regional...

The drafting of a new Global Biodiversity Framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Biodiversity Strategy for the European Union (EU) render 2020 a critical crossroad for biodiversity conservation. Freshwater biodiversity is disproportionately threatened and poorly studied relative to marine and terrestrial biota, despite provi...

In the Mediterranean region, the long-term provision of agro-ecosystem services is threatened by accelerating climate change, unsustainable farming practices and other pressures. Alternative management practices such as conservation agriculture could be expected to ensure sustainability of ecosystem services from Mediterranean agro-ecosystems. Cons...

We developed a discrete and qualitative model of integrated socio-ecosystems, with the help of formal Petri nets. We illustrated such Petri nets in the case study of temporary marshes in the Mediterranean part of France, the Camargue delta, by integrating biotic, abiotic and human-related components along with their processes into the same interact...

Mediterranean wetlands are critical strongholds for biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem functions and services; yet, they are being severely degraded by a number of socio-economic drivers and pressures, including climate change. Moreover, we still lack comprehensive understanding of the extent to which biodiversity loss in Mediterranean wet...

In this essay, a framework is drafted for a new nature policy of which we think it contributes to the conservation of biodiversity, which responds to the expected effects of climate change, and that creates more social participation and accessible nature than the current policy. We propose a policy that focuses on ecosystem services and classifies...

Information and numbers on the use and appreciation of nature are valuable information for protected area (PA) managers. A promising direction is the utilisation of social media, such as the photo-sharing website Flickr. Here we demonstrate a novel approach, borrowing techniques from machine learning (image analysis), natural language processing (L...

Social-ecological systems in the Mediterranean Basin are characterised by high biodiversity and a prolonged cultural influence, leading to the co-evolution of these systems. The unique characteristics of Mediterranean social-ecological systems, current pressures leading to a decline in ecosystem services, and the need for coordinated action are rec...

Land abandonment and the loss of traditional farming practices are thought to control land cover dynamics, and hence the ecosystem service supply in traditionally managed mountain landscapes. We evaluate the impact of land cover changes in Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain), over 1990–2012, on the potential supply capacity of ecosystem services (regul...

The Ramsar Convention is the multilateral agreement aimed at protecting wetlands globally. Wetlands are particularly recognized for their role in the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot by providing key habitats for endemic and migratory species, directly contributing benefits to the lives of people and being an integral part of their culture. In re...

Wetlands in countries around the Mediterranean Sea have provided ecosystem services to its population for more than 6000 years (Nile, Mesopotamian civilizations). Rising population numbers, consumption patterns that increase demands on resources, and reduced water renewal rates have been putting existing social-ecological interactions under conside...

Decision makers are increasingly interested in information from ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scientists have for long recognised the importance of selecting appropriate indicators. Yet, while the amount and variety of indicators developed by scientists seems to increase continuously, the extent to which the indicators truly inform decision...

Given the heterogeneity and richness of Mediterranean farming systems, it is difficult to assess the nature and causes of observed dynamics based on single case studies. This research identifies case studies conducted on the north and south of the Mediterranean basin to provide a comprehensive overview of the current land and farming system dynamic...

The Mediterranean region faces significant challenges to supply its growing population with food and living space. The region's potential to do so in the future is even more uncertain in the light of global change effects. Climate change will impact water availability in the region, which is already limited and often used at un-sustainable rates. T...

Ecosystem services indicators are important to measure the trends and state of ecosystem service delivery; with recent years seeing a wide indicator base being developed. Indicators are powerful tools to inform and improve the knowledge base on ecosystems and ecosystem services, which are useful for decision makers at any spatial scale for basing t...

Urbanization is an important driver of changes in land cover in the Mediterranean Basin and it is likely to impact the supply and demand of ecosystem services (ES). The most significant land cover changes occur in the periurban zone, but little is known about how these changes affect the ES supply. For eight European and four North African cities,...

Global change effects on biodiversity and human wellbeing call for improved long-termenvironmental data as a basis for science, policy and decision making, including increased interoperability, multifunctionality, and harmonization. Based on the example of two global initiatives, the International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network and t...

Wetlands are a key habitat within the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot and provide important ecosystem services for human well-being. Remote sensing (RS) has significantly boosted our ability to monitor changes in Mediterranean wetlands, especially in areas where little information is being collected. However, its application to wetlands has some...

Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-base...

With global science-policy conventions for biodiversity and ecosystem services in place, much effort goes into monitoring and reporting on the progress toward policy targets. As conservation actions happen locally, can such global monitoring and reporting efforts effectively guide conservation actions at subnational level? In this paper we explore...

The ability to monitor changes in biodiversity, and their societal impact, is critical to conserving species and managing ecosystems. While emerging technologies increase the breadth and reach of data acquisition, monitoring efforts are still spatially and temporally fragmented, and taxonomically biased. Appropriate long-term information remains th...

Reporting for policy-science platforms (e.g. IPBES) relies on the use of published data to identify current and future trends for biodiversity and ecosystem services across biomes. Generated reports tend to ignore or underrepresent small social-ecological systems due to either their size or limited data availability. Data gaps or a lesser spatia...

Societal, economic and scientific interests in knowing where biodiversity is, how it is faring and what can be done to efficiently mitigate further biodiversity loss and the associated loss of ecosystem services are at an all-time high. So far, however, biodiversity monitoring has primarily focused on structural and compositional features of ecosys...

Habitat descriptors are cost effective biodiversity indicators demanded by stakeholders and required for regional and global biodiversity monitoring. We mapped 195 farms of different types in twelve case study regions across Europe and tested 18 habitat descriptors for scientific validity, information content and ease of interpretation. We propose...

Paper available in HAL archive for free: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01681621 Global sustainability policies, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the Aichi Targets, aim to ensure sustainable development, including improved human well-being and the conservation of nature. Although not yet explicitly used to evaluate the pro...

Key global indicators of biodiversity decline, such as the IUCN Red List Index and the Living Planet Index, have relatively long assessment intervals. This means they, due to their inherent structure, function as late-warning indicators that are retrospective, rather than prospective. These indicators are unquestionably important in providing infor...

Forest products provide an important source of income and wellbeing for rural smallholder communities across the tropics. Although tropical forest products frequently become over-exploited, only few studies explicitly address the dynamics of degradation in response to socioeconomic drivers. Our study addresses this gap by analyzing the factors driv...

There is a high demand for biodiversity observation data to inform conservation and environmental policy, and citizen scientists generate the vast majority of terrestrial biodiversity observations. As this work is voluntary, many people assume that these data are openly available for use in conservation and scientific research. Here, the openness o...

The concept of ecosystem services has received increased attention in recent years, and is seen as a useful construct for the development of policy relevant indicators and communication for science, policy and practice. Soil erosion is one of the main environmental problems for European Mediterranean agro-forestry systems, making soil erosion preve...

To respond to the need for a strengthened biodiversity science-policy-society interface at the European level, this paper presents the relevant actors and steps of a knowledge synthesis process relying on a Network of Knowledge. This process aims to maximize active involvement and contribution (including holders of traditional and local knowledge),...

The absence of a good interface between scientific and other knowledge holders and decision-makers in the area of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been recognised for a long time. Despite recent advancements, e.g. with the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), challenges remain, particularly concerning th...

La biodiversité joue de nombreux rôles, à la fois source et produit du bon fonctionnement des écosystèmes dont dépendent les services écosystémiques. Dans un contexte de pressions toujours croissantes sur les milieux naturels, les études sur les valeurs de la biodiversité et les services écosystémiques aident à mieux comprendre les interactions ent...

Introduction. Regards croisés sur les valeurs de la biodiversité et les services écosystémiques Virginie Maris, Philip Roche, Harold Levrel et Ilse Geijzendorffer 1. Les valeurs en question Virginie Maris, Vincent Devictor, Isabelle Doussan et Arnaud Béchet Pourquoi les valeurs de la biodiversité nous importent-elles ? Polysémie du terme « valeur...

La biodiversité joue de nombreux rôles, à la fois source et produit du bon fonctionnement des écosystèmes dont dépendent les services écosystémiques. Dans un contexte de pressions toujours croissantes sur les milieux naturels, les études sur les valeurs de la biodiversité et les services écosystémiques aident à mieux comprendre les interactions ent...

Farmland is a major land cover type in Europe and Africa and provides habitat for numerous species. The severe decline in farmland biodiversity of the last decades has been attributed to changes in farming practices, and organic and low-input farming are assumed to mitigate detrimental effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity. Since...

Efficient management of biodiversity requires a forward-looking approach based on scenarios that explore biodiversity changes under future environmental conditions. A number of ecological models have been proposed over the last decades to develop these biodiversity scenarios. Novel modelling approaches with strong theoretical foundation now offer t...

Summary 1. To evaluate progress on political biodiversity objectives, biodiversity monitoring provides information on whether intended results are being achieved. Despite scientific proof that monitoring and evaluation increase the (cost) efficiency of policy measures, cost estimates for monitoring schemes are seldom available, hampering their inc...

Ecosystem services research needs to become more transdisciplinary.•ecoSERVICES will advance co-designed, transdisciplinary ecosystem service research. Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a va...

35 Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a vast amount of research, progress in using this knowledge for sustainable resource use remains insufficient. We see a need to broaden the scope of rese...

1. Political commitment and policy instruments to halt biodiversity loss require robust data and a diverse indicator set to monitor and report on biodiversity trends. Gaps in data availability and narrow-based indicator sets are significant information barriers to fulfilling these needs. 2. In this paper, the reporting requirements of seven global...

Forty percent of the EU land area is currently considered to be agriculturally managed (utilised agricultural area - UAA - Eurostat Agricultural Census 2010), and attention to the environmental performance of farming practices is growing. To determine the performance of agricultural practices, farm-scale monitoring programmes are required but their...

Most of the methodological advancement in Ecosystem Services (ES) assessments have been oriented on the quantification of the ecosystem capacity to provide ES (Seppelt et al., 2011). Despite these advances, the assessment of actual ES remains a serious challenge, notably due to lack on the demand side (Burkhard et al. 2014; Reyers et al., 2012; Sch...

About one-third of the world’s land surface is used for farming, a fact that bears important implications for biodiversity. In Europe, for instance, an estimated 50 percent of all wild species are reliant on agricultural habitats, while agricultural productivity often depends on the presence or absence of particular species. Despite this close coup...