This app aims to help farmers capitalising on native biodiversity through regional community efforts to monitor flower-visiting insects and promote learning-by-doing with biodiversity data. Monitoring communities are organised in so-called experimental biodiversity areas (see EBAs)
The SHOWCASE background
InsectsCount originated in the SHOWCASE project: a European research project about sustainable farming. We are studying the role of biodiversity in agriculture, and testing ways to increase beneficial biodiversity, such as pollinators or earthworms. Farmland biodiversity is steeply declining throughout Europe. Society at large is increasingly concerned about this decline, as it includes iconic wildlife and cultural landscapes. Long-term monitoring of biodiversity across European countries is necessary to keep track of trends in biodiversity. Such monitoring is reliant on efforts by members of the public. In using this app you can contribute!
In the context of achieving the European goal of sustainable farming production, a bridge of knowledge between incentives of agricultural producers and biodiversity management practices is key. Various platforms allow people to volunteer biodiversity observations opportunistically, covering a wide range of species and habitats.
Yet, the unstructured and often closed nature of those data make it difficult to determine biodiversity trends, particularly when needing to appraise changes in land use in specific regions or landscape types. On this app, citizen scientists and famers can record and share their data from standardised counts. This will contribute to establish reliable biodiversity trends. But is also allows us to learn which types of land use and management work best.
