2024 marked the beginning of another Horizon Europe project – OBSGESSION. Coordinated by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the four-year project is going to monitor and predict biodiversity change and its drivers in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems through Earth Observation technologies.
At the foreground of the project’s vision is to facilitate action on biodiversity change by integrating Earth Observation methods, in-situ data, ecological models, and uncertainty estimations, thereby fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. As such, OBSGESSION will strive to advance the understanding of direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity change through cutting-edge data integration and modeling. Moreover, the project is to address science-policy gaps, support conservation planning, and share knowledge for effective engagement of international and EU stakeholders in ecosystem and biodiversity management.
The OBSGESSION project will help address the challenges of declining freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity through a multi-faceted approach aimed at integrating existing methods and technologies for assessing and predicting biodiversity change and its drivers. Its results will be used to help inform efforts like the CBD, IPBES and the European Green Deal and EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and provide state-of-the-art ecological models on biodiversity change on a case study and EU-level.
More information about OBSGESSION can be found on the project’s website. You can also find us on X and LinkedIn.
A project video from the OBSGESSION kick-off meeting is available here.