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Monitoring biodiversity is a fundamental tool for its conservation, as it provides information that can guide and eventually improve the effectiveness of management outcomes. Citizen-science is increasingly advocated as a complement to governmental monitoring programs to overcome scarcity of resources and deliver important information for policy-making. In this study, we used the spatial optimization tool Marxan to explore the advantages and limitations of combining government and citizen-science monitoring networks to achieve monitoring targets for bird species of conservation concern for the EU in Catalonia (NE Spain), a region where both schemes are well established. We designed and compared optimal monitoring networks under four different scenarios: (1) the No-constraints scenario simulates a monitoring network built ex novo, assuming no prior monitoring efforts and no spatial constraints to the selection of monitoring sites; (2) the Protected Areas–only, in which the monitoring would occur exclusively within protected areas where resources from the Regional Administration exist – e.g. personnel - that could be mobilized for monitoring surveys; (3) the Protected Areas–Extended recognizes existing monitoring efforts within the network of protected areas, and allows also monitoring efforts outside protected areas to achieve the monitoring targets for the bird species; (4) Protected Areas-Citizen Science recognizes both the existing resources within protected areas as well as the existing citizen-science bird monitoring programs. The four monitoring network schemes sought to cover the distribution of bird species of conservation concern for the EU in Catalonia under different pressure levels (low, medium and high) of the main threats to each species (agricultural intensification, closure of open spaces, forest immaturity, freshwater pollution and urban development) . In our case study, current government efforts, limited to public land and protected areas, were insufficient to cover the whole spectrum of target species and threat levels, reinforcing the assumption that citizen-science data can greatly assist in achieving monitoring targets. However, simply carrying out both government and citizen-science monitoring ad hoc led to inefficiency and duplication of efforts: some species were represented in excess of monitoring targets while several combinations of species-threat levels were under-sampled. Our study highlights the importance of accounting for species threats when designing monitoring networks, since the ability to link detected negative species trends to potential drivers would make the monitoring data more directly useful for policy decisions. Our results also suggest policy-making should concentrate on providing an adequate platform for coordination of government and citizen-science monitoring to minimize duplicated efforts, overcome the biases of each monitoring scheme and obtain the best from both. ; peerReviewed

The implementation of the Ecosystem Services (ES) framework (including supply and demand) should be based on accurate spatial assessments to make it useful for land planning or environmental management. Despite the inherent dependence of ES assessments on the spatial resolution at which they are conducted, the studies analyzing these effects on ES supply and their relationships are still scarce. To study the influence of the spatial level of analysis on ES patterns and on the relationships among different ES, we selected seven indicators representing ES supply and three variables that describe forest cover and biodiversity for Catalonia (NE Iberian Peninsula). These indicators were estimated at three different scales: local, municipality and county. Our results showed differences in the ES patterns among the levels of analysis. The higher levels (municipality/county) removed part of the local heterogeneity of the patterns observed at the local scale, particularly for ES indicators characterized by a finely grained, scattered distribution. The relationships between ES indicators were generally similar at the three levels. However, some negative relationships (potential trade-offs) that were detected at the local level changed to positive (and significant) relationships at municipality and county. Spatial autocorrelation showed similarities between patterns at local and municipality levels, but differences with county level. We conclude that the use of high-resolution spatial data is preferable whenever available, in particular when identifying hotspots or trade-offs/synergies is of primary interest. When the main objective is describing broad patterns of ES, intermediate levels (e.g., municipality) are also adequate, as they conserve many of the properties of assessments conducted at finer scales, allowing the integration of data sources and, usually, being more directly relevant for policy-making. In conclusion, our results warn against the uncritical use of coarse (aggregated) spatial ES data and indicators in strategies for land use planning and forest conservation. ; We thank to the volunteers fromthe Catalan Ornithological Institute (ICO) and Dr. Miquel de Cáceres Ainsa for providing data for the analyses presented in this study. Funding was obtained from the Catalan Office for Climate Change (OCCC) through project ForESMap, from EU FORESTERRA program (INFORMED project) and from the Spanish government (CGL2013-46808-R and AGL2015-66001-C3-1-R). JVRD was supported by the Government of Asturias and the FP7-Marie Curie- COFUND program of the European Commission (Grant 'Clarín' ACA17- 02). We also thank the ECOMETAS (CGL2014-53840-REDT) network for support. This study also received funding fromthe European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the framework of the MultiFUNGtionality Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (IF-EF) under grant agreement No. 655815 and from the Generalitat de Catalunya (Serra-Hunter Fellow grant number UdL-AG-203). We thank Gabriel Borras and Gemma Cantos (OCCC) for useful discussion during the elaboration of this work. We are very grateful to all persons who made the two Spanish Forest Inventories possible and, especially, to their main coordinators, Ramon Villaescusa (IFN2) and Jose Antonio Villanueva (IFN3). We also thank two anonymous reviewers who helped us improve the quality of the manuscript.

Forest ecosystems provide a wide range of goods and services to society and host high levels of biodiversity. Nevertheless, forest ecosystem services (ES) are often quantified and assessed using simplified methodologies (e.g., proxy methods based exclusively on Land Use Land Cover maps) that introduce substantial uncertainty in the analysis by ignoring, for instance, the species composition and spatial configuration of the ecosystems studied. In this work we defined and calculated a set of 12 indicators of several ES for the forests of the highly populated region of Catalonia (North-eastern Iberian Peninsula). The indicators combined different sources of information such as forest surveys, ecological model predictions and official statistics, but also included additional land cover information. All ES indicators were aggregated at the municipality level to compare their values and distribution patterns. We assessed spatial trade-offs and synergies among ES, as well as their relationships with a set of socioeconomic, climatic and biodiversity variables using correlation analyses and mixed-effects models. The results suggest a clustering of provisioning and regulating ES in mountainous zones towards the North of the study area. These two types of services showed a high degree of spatial similarity and presented high positive correlations. In contrast, cultural ES showed a more scattered pattern, which included lower elevation areas in the South of the study region. Climatic conditions were the main determinants of the spatial variability in the supply of the different ES, with most indicators being positively associated with precipitation and negatively associated with temperature. In addition, biodiversity (particularly woody species richness) showed positive relations with most of these ES, while socioeconomic variables (such as population density and the percentage employment in agriculture) showed negative associations with most of them. The combination of information from different data sources (including primary data) allowed for a detailed analysis of forest ES, likely removing some of the problems derived from approaches based only on proxy methods. In addition, the use of municipalities as study unit makes results directly relevant to management and planning strategies operating at this scale (e.g., forest management and planning). ; Funding was obtained from the Catalan Office for Climate Change (OCCC) through project ForESMap, from EU FORESTERRA program (INFORMED project) and from the Spanish government (CGL2013-46808-R, AGL2015-66001-C3-1-R and CGL2014-59742). We also thank the ECOMETAS (CGL2014-53840-REDT) network for support. This study also received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the framework of the MultiFUNGtionality Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (IF-EF) under grant agreement No655815 and from the Generalitat de Catalunya (Serra-Hunter Fellow). JVRD was supported by the Government of Asturias and the FP7-Marie Curie-COFUND program of the European Commission (Grant 'Clarín' ACA17-02).

Maximizing the area under biodiversity‐related conservation measures is a main target of the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. We analyzed whether agrienvironmental schemes (AES) within EU common agricultural policy, special protected areas for birds (SPAs), and Annex I designation within EU Birds Directive had an effect on bird population changes using monitoring data from 39 farmland bird species from 1981 to 2012 at EU scale. Populations of resident and short‐distance migrants were larger with increasing SPAs and AES coverage, while Annex I species had higher population growth rates with increasing SPAs, indicating that SPAs may contribute to the protection of mainly target species and species spending most of their life cycle in the EU. Because farmland birds are in decline and the negative relationship of agricultural intensification with their population growth rates was evident during the implementation of AES and SPAs, EU policies seem to generally attenuate the declines of farmland bird populations, but not to reverse them. ; PECBMS is supported financially by the RSPB and the European Commission. TT was supported by Institutional Research Plan (RVO: 68081766), SH and LB were supported by EUBON project (308454; FP7‐ENV‐2012 European Commission) and the TRUSTEE project (RURAGRI ERA‐NET 235175), and AL received financial support from the Academy of Finland (project 275606).

Maximizing the area under biodiversity-related conservation measures is a main target of the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. We analyzed whether agrienvironmental schemes (AES) within EU common agricultural policy, special protected areas for birds (SPAs), and Annex I designation within EU Birds Directive had an effect on bird population changes using monitoring data from 39 farmland bird species from 1981 to 2012 at EU scale. Populations of resident and short-distance migrants were larger with increasing SPAs and AES coverage, while Annex I species had higher population growth rates with increasing SPAs, indicating that SPAs may contribute to the protection of mainly target species and species spending most of their life cycle in the EU. Because farmland birds are in decline and the negative relationship of agricultural intensification with their population growth rates was evident during the implementation of AES and SPAs, EU policies seem to generally attenuate the declines of farmland bird populations, but not to reverse them. ; Peer reviewed

Fire has been a source of global biodiversity for millions of years. However, interactions with anthropogenic drivers such as climate change, land use, and invasive species are changing the nature of fire activity and its impacts. We review how such changes are threatening species with extinction and transforming terrestrial ecosystems. Conservation of Earth's biological diversity will be achieved only by recognizing and responding to the critical role of fire. In the Anthropocene, this requires that conservation planning explicitly includes the combined effects of human activities and fire regimes. Improved forecasts for biodiversity must also integrate the connections among people, fire, and ecosystems. Such integration provides an opportunity for new actions that could revolutionize how society sustains biodiversity in a time of changing fire activity. ; The workshop leading to this paper was funded by the Centre Tecnològic Forestal de Catalunya and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. L.T.K. was supported by a Victorian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Victorian Government), a Centenary Fellowship (University of Melbourne), and an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant (LP150100765). A.R. was supported by the Xunta de Galicia (Postdoctoral Fellowship ED481B2016/084-0) and the Foundation for Science and Technology under the FirESmart project (PCIF/MOG/0083/2017). A.L.S. was supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (746191) under the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation. L.R. was supported by the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub. L.B. was partially supported by the Spanish Government through the INMODES (CGL2014-59742-C2-2-R) and the ERANET-SUMFORESTS project FutureBioEcon (PCIN-2017-052). This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station.

Funding: We also acknowledge the Scientific Project of the State Order of the Government of Russian Federation to Lomonosov Moscow State University No. 121032300105-0 for participating in EBBA2 data. Our research was funded through the 2017–2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA—Net COFUND program, with the following funding organizations: the Academy of Finland (Univ. Turku: 326327, Univ. Helsinki: 326338), the Swedish Research Council (Swedish Univ. Agric. Sci: 2018–02440, Lund Univ.: 2018–02441), the Research Council of Norway (Norwegian Instit. for Nature Res., 295767), and the National Science Foundation (Cornell Univ., ICER-1927646), and we also acknowledge the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. ; Wetland bird species have been declining in population size worldwide as climate warming and land-use change affect their suitable habitats. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict changes in range dynamics for 64 non-passerine wetland birds breeding in Europe, including range size, position of centroid, and margins. We fitted the SDMs with data collected for the first European Breeding Bird Atlas and climate and land-use data to predict distributional changes over a century (the 1970s–2070s). The predicted annual changes were then compared to observed annual changes in range size and range centroid over a time period of 30 years using data from the second European Breeding Bird Atlas. Our models successfully predicted ca. 75% of the 64 bird species to contract their breeding range in the future, while the remaining species (mostly southerly breeding species) were predicted to expand their breeding ranges northward. The northern margins of southerly species and southern margins of northerly species, both, predicted to shift northward. Predicted changes in range size and shifts in range centroids were broadly positively associated with the observed changes, although some species deviated markedly from the predictions. The predicted average shift in core distributions was ca. 5 km yr−1 towards the north (5% northeast, 45% north, and 40% northwest), compared to a slower observed average shift of ca. 3.9 km yr−1. Predicted changes in range centroids were generally larger than observed changes, which suggests that bird distribution changes may lag behind environmental changes leading to 'climate debt'. We suggest that predictions of SDMs should be viewed as qualitative rather than quantitative outcomes, indicating that care should be taken concerning single species. Still, our results highlight the urgent need for management actions such as wetland creation and restoration to improve wetland birds' resilience to the expected environmental changes in the future. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed