On 2 June 2020, the European Commission presented this year’s Natura 2000 Award finalists. We are happy to announce that the application “Reinforcing the roles of remote sensing in Natura 2000 monitoring“, an application closely related to Eurosite, has been selected as one of the finalists.

A message by the finalist:

Dear Colleague

We are very happy to announce that our application entitled “Reinforcing the roles of remote sensing in Natura 2000 monitoring” has been selected as a finalist of the European Natura 2000 award 2020 edition under Cross-border Cooperation and Networking category. Our application is based on our efforts over the last year to transfer knowledge on the use of remote sensing in the conservation and monitoring of Natura 2000 protected areas. In doing this, we also contributed to the implementation of the Eurosite Remote Sensing Support Group and published the edition of our book “The roles of remote sensing in nature conservation”. We are very grateful for the permanent support offered by Eurosite, Doñana Biological Station and specially to the Remote Sensing & GIS Lab and to The Monitoring Team on Natural Resources and Processes.

As finalists we are eligible for the ‘European Natura 2000 Citizens’ Award’ being decided by a public online vote starting from June the 2nd until September the 15th. If you share our initiative and would like to support it we kindly ask you to vote for it before 15 September 2020 at:

https://natura2000award-application.eu/finalist/3126

In order to vote you should provide a valid email address in the webpage. A confirmation email will then be sent to the specified address with a link in the main body to be clicked in order to validate your vote. Only validated votes are counted. We sincerely thank you for your support and for spreading the news through your email lists, colleagues and social networks and media.

Kind regards,

Dr. Ricardo Díaz-Delgado, June 2020

The 4th Eurosite Natura 2000 Monitoring workshop, hosted by Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station) and organised by Eurosite member Clive Hurford, played an important role in these efforts. The event brought together Natura 2000 practitioners and experts in remote sensing to help promote the application of remote sensing in the monitoring of Natura 2000 areas. As a direct consequence of this workshop, Eurosite now operates a Remote Sensing Support Group (ERSSG) under the chairmanship of Clive and with, among others, Ricardo as a member, to help practitioners apply remote sensing more widely in their day-to-day work. Part of the efforts of the application “Reinforcing the roles of remote sensing in Natura 2000 monitoring” is the active participation in the ERSSG, which aims to develope innovative, open tools supporting open access to biodiversity spatial data.

To support and reward their efforts we want to invite you to vote as to increase their chances of winning the European Natura 2000 Citizen’s Award. Voting is possible here, until 15 September 2020.