Summary
Biodiversity indicators and monitoring frameworks are currently developed at global and European levels. A key tool for monitoring progress in achieving the EU target to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010 is the recently endorsed set of EU headline biodiversity indicators. A requirement by the EU is to complement the indicator set and the development of biodiversity monitoring frameworks with tools that are able to assess the impacts of Community policies on biodiversity in a cost-effective way.

The BioScore project will satisfy this requirement by developing a tool for linking pressures from policy sectors to the (change in the) state of biodiversity as measured by the presence and abundance of individual species. The tool to be developed will be a database that will contain information on the ecological preferences of individual species in relation to individual sectoral pressures and relating to selected Community policies as well as the EU headline biodiversity indicators. This tool will be applied for assessing impacts and the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation policies based on historic data as well as for forecasting future impacts based on existing scenario studies. The results of these assessments will be presented in European maps. The BioScore tool will be integrated into existing biodiversity monitoring frameworks and incentives for uptake will be formulated. Furthermore, the tool will be made freely accessible on the Internet.

Time frame
February 2006-February 2009