In this project, Naturalis Biodiversity Center is working with Green Nets on the mapping of opportunities to strengthen biodiversity. Green Nets has a unique position and the potential to form a national natural infrastructure, in order to contribute to large-scale biodiversity recovery in the Netherlands.
EcologicalMain Infrastructure
Green Nets is a collaboration of eight infrastructure managers in the Netherlands: Alliander, Enexis Gasunie, KPN, ProRail, Rijkswaterstaat, Stedin and TenneT. The participants work on various concrete projects within four key themes: climate, circularity, biodiversity and measuring impact. Within biodiversity, we are looking at creating an Ecological Main Infrastructure within a large part of the almost 1000 km2 of acreage that the parties manage together.
In white, the map displays the areas used by the infrastructure partners which forms the basis of the biodiversity opportunity map.
BiodiversityOpportunity Map
This network of sites will serve as the basis for the biodiversity opportunity map. The main objective is to make maximum use of the acreage to enhance biodiversity.
The Biodiversity Opportunity Map answers the question: 'What are the opportunities in the Green Nets area to strengthen biodiversity?' The opportunities are mapped out by cleverly combining information from the Green Nets parties with biodiversity data for the entire Netherlands.
The map is being developed in order to subsequently utilize these opportunities for biodiversity by implementing concrete projects.
Natural infrastructureOverview of actions
To obtain an overview of actions that have a real impact on biodiversity, Stedin and Naturalis have drawn up a list of possible infrastructure measures for design, construction, adjustments to acreage, infrastructure and (nature) management.
By collecting an expert opinion from about forty (urban) ecologists and biologists, an overview has been created with fifty concrete nature-inclusive measures that the Green Nets and other organizations can implement on and around their infrastructure. It shows what is possible in and around grid operators' property to strengthen biodiversity and thus contribute to a healthy and future-proof infrastructure.
Natural infrastructure measures overview
More information can be found on NatureToday - What are promising actions for biodiversity within the Dutch infrastructure?
The overview of infrastructure measures is available here with the accompanying spreadsheet with detailed data.
Approachand ambitions
Based on ecological modelling, an overview can be made for each selected location of the opportunities for biodiversity. In doing so, we consider biodiversity in a broad sense, including endangered species, birds and mammals, as well as bees, butterflies, dragonflies and plants.
We use existing models, which have not been made for all species, but which do provide a good overview of the richness of species per group and the opportunities for specific indicator species for different landscape types. With the Green Nets team, we can link the acreage to Naturalis' biodiversity models, resulting in an aggregated map layer with biodiversity opportunities displayed as hotspots per location.
This results in an opportunity map for Green Nets that indicates where the most potential lies for the Green Nets organizations to strengthen biodiversity within the Ecological Main Infrastructure.
In this Youtube video the approach is explained. The video is in Dutch and automatic translation is available.