LIM: Landscape indicators for biodiversity

Biodiversity is increasingly threatened. The decline that is taking place today due to habitat loss and habitats is accelerating. In order to prevent the loss of biodiversity, we need to be able to easily follow trends in biodiversity, which at the same time allows us to evaluate measures targeted so that biodiversity can recover.

On behalf of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, IVL is collaborating with the Swedish Environmental Institute and Stockholm University to develop user-friendly indicators that enable large-scale monitoring of how biological diversity develops in the future.

Great focus within the project lays on considering the large regional differences and conditions within Sweden. Due to this, the study is conducted in Skåne, Södermanland, Gävleborg County and Norrbotten County, so that the developed indicators work throughout the country.

IVL's task is to evaluate whether the indicators that are developed to monitor the development of species richness can work just as well to predict and understand trends in genetic diversity at landscape level. The focus is on the genetic diversity of the small bluebell as a flagship species.