Landscape scale biodiversity assessment: the problem of scaling

Preface Research on biodiversity is essential to help the European Union and EU Member States to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity as well as reach the target of halting the loss of biodiversity in Europe by 2010. The need for coordination between researchers, the policy-makers that need research results and the organisations that fund research is reflected in the aims of the BioPlatform network. BioPlatform is a network of scientists and policy makers that work in different fields of biodiversity and aims at improving the effectiveness and relevance of European biodiversity research, fulfilling functions that provide significant components of a European Research Area. BioPlatform supports the existing " European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy " (EPBRS), a forum of scientists and policy makers representing the EU countries, whose aims are to promote discussion of EU biodiversity research strategies and priorities, exchange of information on national biodiversity activities and the dissemination of current best practices and information regarding the scientific understanding of biodiversity conservation. This is a report of the BioPlatform E-conference entitled " Landscape scale biodiversity assessment: the problem of scaling " preceding the EPBRS meeting to be held in Budapest, Hungary from the 31 Summary Both organising institutions, the Institute of Ecology and Botany and the Ministry for Environment and Water, have experience of habitat level biodiversity assessment and mapping through the development and operation of the Hungarian Biodiversity Monitoring System. During the organisation of the EPBRS meeting in Hungary, scaling emerged as an important issue to address among both natural and social scientists. Scaling, as a scie ntific problem has not been touched upon so far at EPBRS meetings, so the organisers hope to awaken the interest of the scientific community by selecting this topic as the basis of the EPBRS meeting in Hungary. The aim of this EPBRS meeting is to focus on the ecological research problems raised by the different scales of biodiversity (with an emphasis on landscape scale), and the interaction between policy and social aspects with biodiversity conservation at different scales. In order to reach those aims, the e-conference had four sessions running in parallel, on the following themes: The overall conclusions from those sessions are as follows: Session I-Scaling problems in biodiversity assessment In total, this session had 55 contributions (16 keynotes and 39 other contributions). The main topics of this session were scaling up and indicators. Scaling-up: This is a topic …