Monitoring the Effectiveness of Habitat Conservation in Switzerland (WBS)

To protect its biodiversity and to prevent further habitat loss and the extinction of endangered species, Switzerland designated about 7000 sites of national importance since the early 1990s. These nationally important sites are legally protected and include fens, bogs, dry grasslands, riparian areas, flood plains and amphibian breeding sites. They now are a crucial element of the network of protected sites in Switzerland. In 2011, the WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute and the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) launched the joint project, "Monitoring the Effectiveness of Habitat Conservation in Switzerland (WBS)". Using remote sensing approaches as well as floristic and faunistic field surveys, we monitor whether the sites of national importance are developing along with their conservation targets and whether their area and habitat quality is maintained. The remote-sensing module monitors all sites of national importance on a regular basis. Based on these data, an online color-coded warning system has been established to ensure early detection of negative changes and to conduct prompt conservation measures. This tool can be assessed by the responsible federal and cantonal conservation authorities. The very laborious field surveys are conducted in a subsample of all sites. Vegetation changes in fens, bogs, dry grasslands, riparian areas and flood plains are interpreted using diversity and compositional measures. The regular sampling of amphibian species and their population-size classes reflect temporal changes in amphibian breeding sites.

The project is composed of the following three modules:

Additional Info

Field Value
subprojects Amphibian breeding sites module, Vegetation module, Remote-sensing module