The first pan-European database documents the decline in plant species diversity

Some time ago, the European Environment Agency (EEA) asked MU experts to prepare a pan-European analysis of changes in plant diversity and the quality of natural habitats. “However, we found that this could not be done due to a lack of data. Therefore, we approached hundreds of botanists and plant ecologists from all over Europe with a request to provide data to the database, which we called ReSurveyEurope," recalls project leader Milan Chytrý from the Department of Botany and Zoology of the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University.

In 2020, in collaboration with colleagues from universities and research institutes in Vienna (Austria), Halle (Germany), and Wageningen (the Netherlands), they began an extensive collection of all available data on plant diversity surveys repeated at the same location at different times. During four years, they obtained and entered data from more than 85,000 locations into the database. In some of them, a complete list of plant species was taken twice at intervals of several years, while in others, surveys were made more than once. "The database now contains more than 450,000 repeated detailed records of plant diversity and is the largest of its kind in the world. The oldest entry in the database is from 1911 and comes from the Swiss Alps," explained database manager Ilona Knollová from the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University.

The obtained data show major changes in European plant diversity. "Specialized species bound only to certain habitats are disappearing from the landscape, and in contrast, a few species capable of growing in many different biotopes are spreading. Differences are disappearing, monotony is increasing," sums up Chytrý.

Although the data from the database shows mostly negative trends, its creators are convinced that a deeper knowledge of these changes is the key to reversing them in the near future.