Understanding how biodiversity is changing requires observations that are consistent and comparable across ecosystems, locations and time. Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) provide a common framework for describing key dimensions of biodiversity change, from species populations and community composition to ecosystem structure and function. Producing these variables at relevant spatial and temporal scales increasingly depends on integrating Earth Observation with in-situ measurements, citizen science, eDNA and ecological modelling.
As the first alliance established under the ESSI Biodiversity Flagship, this collaboration brought together the ESA Biodiversity+ precursor activities EO4DIVERSITY and BIOMONDO with the Horizon Europe OBSGESSION project, advancing the results of the two ESA projects under the later started larger European research initiative. The ESA activities developed Earth Observation-based approaches for monitoring terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity. Building on this scientific and technological foundation, OBSGESSION further integrates long-term multi-sensor satellite and airborne observations with in-situ, citizen-science and eDNA data, next-generation ecological models and uncertainty assessment to monitor and predict biodiversity change and its direct and indirect drivers across terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems.
The continuity between the activities is already visible in scientific outputs. A 2025 Scientific Data study on European Nature Information System (EUNIS) habitat mapping developed machine-learning approaches combining multi-source EO data to produce habitat maps with improved thematic and spatial detail for Europe. The work was developed within EO4DIVERSITY and acknowledges OBSGESSION, demonstrating how methods developed through the ESA precursor activity are being carried forward in the Horizon Europe project. A second study on continental-scale habitat modelling further demonstrates this evolution, combining artificial intelligence with multimodal EO to develop scalable habitat-modelling approaches initially developed through EO4DIVERSITY and subsequently advanced within OBSGESSION.
By further scaling the results of two ESA precursor activities through OBSGESSION, the alliance demonstrates how complementary investments in EO-based biodiversity science are further developed, validated and scaled rather than remaining as individual demonstrations. Together, the projects strengthened the scientific foundations of EBVs and contributed to European and international biodiversity monitoring, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.