Biodiversity and Agroecosystems

The Agriculture and Biodiversity Research Domain advances an integrated scientific and technological agenda that aligns with the European Green Deal, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and global biodiversity frameworks by addressing the interdependencies between food production, ecosystem integrity, and natural resource sustainability. By combining Earth Observation, high-throughput sequencing, ecoinformatics, Artificial Intelligence, and climate modelling, this domain develops digital systems capable of simultaneously assessing agricultural performance, compliance with sustainable farming policies, and the impacts of land-use and climate change on biodiversity, from soil biodiversity to habitats and genetic resources. Research activities range from predicting soil microbiota, organic carbon, and pathogen occurrence using satellite data, to classifying crop and habitat types across space, to quantifying biodiversity degradation and freshwater resource loss in ecosystems. This interdisciplinary foundation supports evidence-based biodiversity protection strategies, bridging ecology, agronomy, environmental science, and computational technologies.

Building on this foundation, the domain also delivers operational Earth Observation–driven agricultural monitoring systems that enhance food security, support the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy, and enable precision and climate-smart farming. Through projects such as CLIMACA, BEYOND has developed scalable machine-learning workflows for crop classification, runoff-risk assessment, agricultural intensification, practice detection (e.g., harvesting, stubble burning, etc.), and national-to-continental crop monitoring using dense Sentinel-1/2 time series and big-data infrastructures. Complementary tools such as Grassland Mowing Events Detection and Cultivated Crop Type Maps integrate deep learning, artificial vegetation indices, and cloud-resilient radar–optical fusion to support Paying Agencies, protected-area managers, and environmental authorities in ensuring regulatory compliance, safeguarding Natura 2000 sites, and reducing the need for costly field inspections. Together, these biodiversity-aware agricultural monitoring solutions form a comprehensive decision-support ecosystem that strengthens sustainable development, improves agricultural productivity, and enables national and pan-European environmental governance.

Climate and land-use change drive vegetation expansion in the Greek mountains with adverse effects on biodiversity and water resources (from Theodoridis et al. 2025)

References

• Theodoridis, S., Hickler, T., Nogues-Bravo, D., Ploch, S., Mishra, B., Thines, M., (2025) Satellite-observed mountain greening predicts genomic erosion in a grassland medicinal herb over half a century. Current Biology