THE RESEARCH OF ÂNGELA LOMBA (CIBIO-InBIO) HAS BEEN HIGHLIGHTED BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S SCIENCE FOR ENVIRONMENT POLICY.

As recent losses of ecological value in many European rural landscapes have been attributed to changing agricultural practices, nature conservation and rural development priorities have progressively converged within EU agricultural and environmental policies, thus contributing to an increased efficiency and progress towards conservation goals and targets.

To overcome the lack of specific rules and quantified criteria for identifying High Nature Value farmlands (HNVf) that compromise the ability to produce accurate and realistic spatially-explicit information on HNVf landscapes across Europe, a novel approach for a cost-effective mapping and monitoring of HNV farmlands was proposed by an international team of scientists which includes CIBIO-InBIO researchers Ângela Lomba and João Honrado.

Due to their relevance and impact, the findings gathered by these researchers, which were recently published the Journal of Environmental Management, have now been highlighted in the 394th issue of the European Commission’s Science for Environment Policy.

The approach described by the authors is based on the progressive simplification and aggregation of the monitoring objectives and expected outputs as one moves to larger spatial scales, with the ultimate aim of obtaining a cohesive, European wide, representation of HNVf that can contribute effectively to policy and decision making. In addition, the need to implement and enforce a set of guidelines and standards that not only allow the production of a consistent report on HNVf indicators throughout Europe, but also ensure more efficient communication about HNVf within and between Member States is highlighted.

To read the European Commission’s highlight, please click here.

To read the original article, please click here.