Researchers call for biodiversity monitoring system

Scientists are calling for a new global system that would monitor biodiversity. Ideally, this system, dubbed the Global Biodiversity Observing System, would help researchers and conservationists track the problems caused by climate change and other threats to species around the world. “The lethal combination of habitat loss, the exploitation of natural populations, pollution and climate change is causing species extinction rates not seen since the last mass extinction 65 million years ago,” said Andrew Gonzalez, a conservation biologist at McGill University, and co-chair of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, in a press release. “We lack the means to monitor these impacts fast enough across most areas of the planet.” In a paper published recently in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Gonzalez and his colleagues laid out the specifics of what such a monitoring system would look like.

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