Biodiversa+ is a European Biodiversity Partnership which aims to support biodiversity research and to connect science, society and policy. The CBD Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 are calling for increasing the extent of protected areas to at least 30% of land and sea.

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In this context, the GaP project aims to strengthen the network of EU protected areas by identifying priority areas to safeguard biodiversity, and influencing EU conservation policies. The main objective is to develop novel methods for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas (i.e., KBAs, the largest global network of systematically identified sites important for biodiversity) and to provide guidance for the expansion of the network of protected areas in EU countries.

 

Our research lab will perform spatial irreplaceability analysis across Europe in order to identify potential KBAs and sites that potentially meet criterion 4E. This will be the first continental-scale use of this criterion, and we expect our results to be informative not only for the identification of KBAs in Europe, but also for informing and possibly refining KBA guidelines in this respect.