Birdwatch is a three-year project funded by the EU funding programme Horizon Europe. Eurac Research is partner in the consortium led by Luftbild Umwelt Planung GmbH (Germany), which includes Sinergise (Slovenia), Vito (Belgium), the National paying Agency of Lithuania, the University of Potsdam (Germany) and Agro Digital Solutions (Lithuania). BirdWatch is addressing the dramatic decline in agricultural biodiversity with the vision to contribute to the increase in biodiversity and the improvement of farmland ecosystem health in Europe and thus promote sustainable farming practices, which eventually contribute to the resilience of our society. Birdwatch specifically aims to develop a service to map areas with high deficits or potentials in habitat structure for bird species and to provide decision support for the implementation of greening measures to enhance the habitat suitability of the bird species and to improve the efficiency of payments. Combining the expertise from biology, macroecology, remote sensing, data science, optimisation, machine learning, policy frameworks, compliance and environmental economics, BirdWatch will develop a novel web-based biodiversity monitoring and decision-support service, specifically targeting actors in the agri-food sector. The role of Eurac Research in the project is to provide satellite derived information products to model and monitor farmland bird habitat suitability.

Contact: Alexander Jacob