0000000000247898
AUTHOR
Les G. Firbank
Modelling the European Farmland Bird Indicator in response to forecast land-use change in Europe
International audience; The European Farmland Bird Indicator (EFBI) has been adopted as a Structural and Sustainable Development Indicator by the European Union. It is an aggregated index integrating the population trends of 33 common bird species associated with farmland habitats across 21 countries. We describe a modelling method for predicting this indicator from land-use characteristics. Using yearly historical land-use data of crop areas derived from the FAO databases (1990–2007) and published population data of farmland birds at the national level for the same period, we developed a series of multiple regression models to predict the trend of the EU state specific indicator, and the E…
Indicators for assessing the environmental impacts of land use changes across Europe
International audience; Much progress has been made in understanding future trend development over the last years. Governments and international bodies are increasingly attempting to assess ex-ante the impact of their policy proposals. In the SENSOR project, environmental sustainability is assessed by answering a set of policy relevant questions likely to affect goods and services provided by land. The answer is complex and the assessment of future options is very sensitive to scale, how far ahead in time is being considered, and whether the assessment addresses local, regional or global concerns. The relationships between components of land use and the response of environmental indicators …