AlpsLife
AlpsLife: Protect Alpine Life by monitoring and managing Alpine biodiversity for the future. “Observing globally, acting locally”.
The Alps are a global biodiversity hotspot whose unique ecosystems are facing significant threats from climate change and land-use pressures. Efforts to conserve and restore Alpine biodiversity are often fragmented due to a lack of Alpine-wide coordination and varying biodiversity monitoring schemes across different countries.
The AlpsLife project aims to address these challenges by promoting science-based strategies and establishing a common framework for transnational cooperation. Relying on EU-relevant ecological indicators, AlpsLife ensures the interoperability of biodiversity data from multiple sources and assesses trends to create a shared understanding of biodiversity processes. By testing these indicators on the ground and adjusting them to meet the specific policy needs of Alpine countries, this project enables more effective cross-border management and decision-making to safeguard Alpine biodiversity.
This project is co-funded by the European Union through the Interreg Alpine Space programme and is a partnership across multiple scales and across the Alpine space. These collaborators include scientific institutions such as Eurac Research, Universität Innsbruck, and the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA); the Alpine Network of Protected Areas (ALPARC); CIPRA Lab; and protected areas from various Alpine countries.
The Universität Innsbruck is responsible for collecting and refining high-resolution land-use/land-cover maps, calculating and mapping biodiversity relevant indicators and identifying “urgent-need-to-act” areas in the Alps.
Aims
- Identify specific areas that need attention for conservation or ecological restoration policies.
- Select EU indicators to be downscaled at the Alpine level and develop interoperability strategies which establish a common understanding of conservation status of the Alpine biodiversity.
- Implement the selected indicators on the ground by building on existing data and filling knowledge gaps.
- Ensure consistency with the policy needs of the Alpine countries to better implement and utilise AlpsLife results in the long-term.
Results
- A greater understanding of Alpine biodiversity status and trends with an Alpine Biodiversity Data Hub.
- Science-based, unified strategies for biodiversity conservation and restoration, facilitating transnational strategies.
- Incorporated project outcomes into long-term management plans for Alpine protected areas and regional/national stakeholder strategies.
Projekt funding
Duration: September 2024 - August 2027
Total budget: € 2,916,176.40
Interreg funding: € 2,082,132.30
Project partners
Contact
Georg Leitinger georg.letinger@uibk.ac.at