Biodiversity monitoring and data - Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic
Biodiversity monitoring and data
What we do
Monitoring of the status, changes, and trends in nature is another important NCA activity. The mapping of wild plant and animal species occurrence and distribution, monitoring population trends or the development in natural habitats (altogether biodiversity surveillance), as well as in whole ecosystems, represents an inevitable prerequisite of nature conservation and landscape protection. The outputs are used for the preparation of specially protected area management plans, specification of state subsidy policies, and the formulation of nature conservation and landscape protection state policy. The results of habitat and wildlife species monitoring is a main basis for the reports submitted to the European Commission by the Ministry of the Environment under European Community legislation. The inventories are one of the main sources of biodiversity data in protected areas.
Monitoring is defined as long-term observation of a feature (species/habitat) by a standard method in order to assess changes over time and determine their cause.
Mapping is a systematic survey of entire area in order to achieve actual occurrence of the species/habitats.
Inventory is a single survey of the current state of specified area. Most often, inventories are done in small-scale protected areas, core zones of PLAs, and localities under investigation. Inventories serve as basic documentation for the preparation of management plans for small-scale protected areas. The inventories are mostly financed on a project basis.
All gathered data are stored in and published through the Information System of Nature Conservation (portal.nature.cz). The Information System allows the collection and processing of data obtained by habitat and wildlife species monitoring and inventories. It also includes a register of specially protected flora and fauna species, information on the territorial system of ecological stability, and other data and databases (it is mostly available in Czech).