Recent global assessments highlight an urgent need to rethink how we educate and equip current and future generations to engage with biodiversity loss and sustainability challenges. The Villars Institute Global Issues Survey 2025–2026 indicates that young people are calling for learning that develops systems thinking, biodiversity literacy, sustainability competencies, ethical reasoning, and futures literacy. They view these capacities as essential for contributing to more just, resilient, and sustainable planetary futures. 

In response, we introduce Biosphere Thinking: an integrative framework that brings together ecological understanding, ethics and values, futures capability, and transformation-oriented practice. Biosphere Thinking is structured around three interconnected pillars. Purpose: Ethics, Values, and Visions addresses why biodiversity matters, how plural values of nature can be understood and reconciled, and what constitutes just and legitimate action. It engages learners with environmental ethics, justice in biodiversity governance, and the co-production of inclusive and credible visions of possible future. Possibility: Scenarios and Futures focuses on how change unfolds and how alternative pathways can be explored. It connects social-ecological modelling, biodiversity–climate interactions, and participatory foresight to enable learners to anticipate risks, explore uncertainty, and identify leverage points for transformation. Practice: Translation and Action emphasizes implementation, equipping learners with tools for evidence synthesis, indicator development, decision support, and science–policy–society engagement, with a strong focus on co-production with stakeholders across sectors.

Together, these three pillars form a coherent and actionable approach that enables learners not only to understand biosphere challenges but also to respond to them in informed, ethical, and effective ways. The framework aligns closely with international agendas, including those of IPBES and the Global Biodiversity Framework, and is designed to support education and capacity-building efforts across disciplines and sectors.

This poster presents the broad concept of Biosphere Thinking education and learning. By integrating purpose, possibility, and practice, Biosphere Thinking offers a pathway to empower learners and practitioners to navigate complexity, bridge knowledge and action, and contribute meaningfully to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. We invite collaboration to refine, implement, and scale this approach across educational and policy contexts.

How to cite: Petchey, O., Pernthaler, J., Santos, M., and Schaepman-Strub, G.: Biosphere Thinking: Integrating Purpose, Possibility, and Practice for Biodiversity and Sustainability Education, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1020, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1020, 2026.

Amplicon-based metagenomics is an effective tool for the study of various biological communities - from bacteria to higher eukaryotes – in various environments such as the animal/human body, soil, water, and other ecosystems. However, achieving reliable and reproducible results is methodologically demanding.

As a provider of sequencing services, we gain - through cooperation with customers from a wide spectrum of fields - a unique overview of the methodological pitfalls and critical control points that can significantly influence the quality and reliability of research project outputs. Our goal is the systematic optimization of at least a part of the many factors which, in sum across the entire metagenomics workflow, significantly complicate the interpretation of analysis results.

Using specific examples, we demonstrate that any change of the workflow such as sample collection and preservation, DNA extraction based on the starting material (stool, soil, water, etc.) and project objectives (G+/G- bacteria, fungal communities, or higher eukaryotes), and other following wetlab factors, e.g. PCR specifications - target regions, primers and their modifications, specific reagents (e.g., polymerase) and their concentrations, or thermal profiles, can significantly affect the result (the relative abundance of the specific organisms within the sample).

We demonstrate that also sequencing and data analysis have great impact on the output. The key factors are NGS sequencing platform selection (short versus long reads), bioinformatic processing strategy, pipeline and software implementation and reference database selection.

Standardizing the determination of various community types via amplicon sequencing represents a complex task that requires careful and systematic methodology optimization. A key element for verifying the correctness of the procedure is the use of clearly defined mock community standards. Furthermore, to ensure the comparability of results between individual facilities, it is essential to engage in inter-laboratory quality controls or to participate in official external quality assessment (EQA) programs guaranteed by a recognized authority.

How to cite: Kujanova, M.: FROM SAMPLING TO TAXONOMY - Critical Control Points in DNA Metabarcoding Workflows, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1021, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1021, 2026.

India's mining sector is the country's single largest corporate driver of forest and habitat loss, yet systematic evidence on how mining firms manage biodiversity obligations across the full mine life-cycle remains almost entirely absent from the Indian business-strategy literature. Regulatory frameworks are multi-layered spanning across Environment (Protection) Act 1986, Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, the Biological Diversity Act 2002, and SEBI's Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR). But the combined effectiveness at producing ecological outcomes remains empirically unexamined. This paper addresses that gap through a focused secondary-data case study of Vedanta Limited, one of India's largest diversified metals and mining conglomerates, whose operations in Odisha (Lanjigarh bauxite-aluminium), Rajasthan (Zawar zinc-lead mines), and Goa (iron ore) are in ecologically sensitive geographies and have been subject to some of the most publicly contested biodiversity clearance proceedings.

The research question addresses - How does Vedanta Limited manage biodiversity obligations across the mine life-cycle from environmental clearance and active operations through progressive rehabilitation and mine closure and does its publicly disclosed biodiversity strategy align with the mitigation hierarchy? The hierarchy rests on a logic of sequential prioritisation: avoidance is ecologically preferable to offsetting, and biodiversity losses from the latter are rarely equivalent to those from the former (Bull et al., 2013; Maron et al., 2016).

The paper applies institutional theory specifically the compliance-decoupling proposition and the mitigation hierarchy framework to analyse whether Vedanta's disclosed biodiversity commitments represent genuine strategic integration or symbolic conformity with regulatory expectations. The decoupling prediction is tested against life-cycle stages. The natural resource-based view provides a counterpoint predicting that firms operating in ecologically sensitive, community-governed geographies face continuous rather than episodic accountability, making full decoupling strategically untenable.

The paper uses exclusively publicly available secondary data as Vedanta's BRSR filings; Environmental Impact Assessment reports and Forest Clearance orders; Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) Progressive Mine Closure Plan compliance summaries; CAMPA state-level utilisation data; Vedanta's Sustainability Reports and Supreme Court and National Green Tribunal orders. 

Findings will inform SEBI's development of sector-specific BRSR biodiversity indicators for extractive industries, the Ministry of Mines' ongoing review of mine closure norms.

How to cite: Sindhi, S.: Mining the Mitigation Hierarchy: Biodiversity Management Across the Mine Life-Cycle at Vedanta Limited, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1025, 2026.

The fast pace of large-scale ecosystem change, precipitated by increasingly novel climate conditions, is pushing conservation investment strategies commit to time-bounded outcomes at national and global scales (e.g., 30x30 national and global initiatives). Historically, conservation investments by governments or conservation institutions had relatively narrow, resource-specific biodiversity objectives. Today, governments and institutions are grappling with ecosystem-level impacts, with the need to simultaneously evaluate risk, vulnerability, high value resources, and mitigation effectiveness across multiple resource areas and their associated ecosystem services. Data, modeling, and evaluation systems that can address ecosystem-wide resource conditions and management options in the face of climate change are greatly needed to support effective conservation investment and action.

We developed a model (PROMOTE) that provides a quantitative representation of climate-informed management strategies across ten resources areas (pillars of resilience) that span and represent socio-ecological systems resilience, with biodiversity conservation being one of the pillars or resilience. The PROMOTE model uses a state-of-the-art climate analog modeling technique to generate 30-m pixel scale, resource-specific representations of future resource stability based on the combination of the magnitude of climate change and resource vulnerability for each of ten resource pillars. We applied this model across the western United States, where climate change is already threatening the persistence of most of the country’s conifer forest ecosystems. We found that carbon and biodiversity are highly compatible conservation objectives (e.g., current areas of high value align), but their areas of future resource stability differ. Furthermore, future stability of forest resilience is generally poor in many areas that are currently high value for biodiversity and carbon. We highlight how the PROMOTE modeling approach, and its companion software tool Planscape, enables governments and institutions to consider the impact of future climate on biodiversity in the context of whole-ecosystem conservation. We demonstrate that this more holistic approach to conservation assessment and investment can results in significantly different investment priorities and expected outcomes, based on their likelihood of future stability, integrity, and persistence. These considerations have substantial implications for regional, national, and global conservation initiatives. 

How to cite: Manley, P. and Povak, N.: Making biodiversity an equal partner in large-scale, multi-resource climate resilience assessment and investment , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1026, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1026, 2026.

Global assessments of vegetation patterns require methods that overcome spatial and temporal limitations of ground measurements. Remote sensing enables the systematic observation of vegetation properties across biomes on a global scale, providing benchmarks and/or novel resolution for characterizing the biosphere and its biodiversity. Among earth orbiting sensors, imaging spectrometers provide continuously resolved information about chemical, structural and physiological plant traits that affect ecosystem function and are indicative of plant phylogenetic diversity. As international efforts lead towards repeated wall to wall coverage of spectral properties of the Earth’s surface, there is a growing need for coordinated calibration and validation of models that predict functional plant traits from spectral information across different biomes. Here, we present the AVUELO campaign (Airborne Validation Unified Experiment Land to Ocean), which is focused on the calibration and validation of trait models in tropical ecosystems to improve the monitoring and understanding of ecosystem function and biodiversity.

AVUELO is a NASA campaign that was conducted in February 2025 in Panama and Costa Rica in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). During the campaign, the airborne imaging spectrometer AVIRIS-3 acquired data over tropical terrestrial and marine ecosystems at 1 and 3 m spatial resolution. These airborne acquisitions were complemented by ground sampling.  The ground samples from taxonomically identified trees were chosen to represent as much of the phylogenetic variation found in Panama as possible and included more than 1,000 top-of-canopy leaf samples from over 400 tropical forest species for measurements of leaf spectral and chemical properties. The relationships between measured spectra and vegetation properties will be used to improve models that predict plant traits from reflectance spectra acquired by currently operational (EMIT, PRISMA, DESIS, HISUI, EnMAP) and upcoming (NASA-EAGLE-VSWIR and ESA-CHIME) spaceborne imaging spectrometers. This effort will enhance the capability to monitor ecosystem function and biodiversity consistently across biomes at a global scale.

How to cite: Czyż, E. A., Angel Lopez, Y. B., Baresch, A. A., Graves, S. J., Kovach, K., Luis, K., Muller-Landau, H. C., Pavlick, R. P., Podest, E., Quinteros Casaverde, N. L., Schimel, D., Serbin, S. P., and Townsend, P. A.: AVUELO – Imaging Spectroscopy Flight Campaign to Advance Tropical Ecology, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1028, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1028, 2026.

Reforestation is a critical climate mitigation strategy, yet traditional carbon market models often exclude Indigenous Peoples and other rural landholders due to high technical and financial barriers. Furthermore, many large-scale initiatives prioritize fast-growing exotic species over native, ecological more suitable species and do not engage communities. In 2020-21 we began a consultation process in the Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca, Panama to develop a transdisciplinary, community-driven reforestation project that integrates scientific evidence with local priorities. We combine ecological and social science research.

The project compensates Indigenous residents and smallholder farmers for planting and stewarding native trees in degraded and deforested areas. Through participatory consultations, 27 native species were selected for planting suitability based on ecological potential and locally valued uses. Agreements were also established to ensure fair payments for land use, maintenance, and long-term carbon sequestration (20 years). Between 2022 and 2023, species selection trials were planted in 100 hectares across 27 landholdings. Two years post-planting, survival rates ranged between 40–60%, achieving approximately 50% of the projected planted target by year three. As expected, some species did not survive the first dry season. Variability in establishment success might also be linked to soil texture and fertility, water availability, and microclimatic conditions. Here we report on survivorship and growth across trial plots and in relation to soil fertility and topographic position, essential information to inform large scale reforestation with understudied species.

In addition, the project convenes regular technical meetings and participatory assemblies with landholders and Indigenous authorities to present monitoring outcomes, review tree performance, and discuss management practices implemented directly by community members on their lands, thereby ensuring transparency, collective evaluation, and adaptive decision-making throughout the initiative.

By combining rigorous ecological monitoring with equitable benefit-sharing and community participation, this initiative seeks to develop reforestation strategies that generate long-term environmental benefits and sustainable income, laying the foundation for broader reforestation initiatives here and elsewhere.

How to cite: Rodriguez Alarcon, S. and Hall, J.: Community-based smart reforestation in indigenous territories, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1030, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1030, 2026.

Biodiversity models extend predictions of species assemblages beyond direct observations and play a key role in applications such as conservation planning. Yet, predicting the spatial distribution of species assemblages remains a persistent challenge in biogeography, as both abiotic constraints and biotic interactions shape community composition through complex interactions. Multi-species distribution models are promising because they can integrate information about species co-occurrence, but they remain largely limited to environmental filtering. Functional trait data, such as morphological, physiological, or phenological characteristics, offer considerable yet underutilized potential to inform models about species responses to the environment and ecological assembly rules. Recent deep learning-based approaches to species distribution modelling provide a promising avenue in this context, as they can model large numbers of species simultaneously and offer a flexible framework for integrating heterogeneous data sources. 

Here, we propose a two-step deep learning approach to incorporate traits into assemblage predictions. In a first step, we model trait-informed habitat suitability by training a deep learning species distribution model using opportunistic occurrence records, high-resolution environmental predictors, and species-level trait data. In a second step, we use vegetation plot data to train a transformer-based model that predicts species assemblages from these habitat suitability score predictions and learned trait representations. By leveraging attention mechanisms, the model captures associations between species, potentially accounting for biotic dependencies and co-occurrence structure. We evaluate our framework on plant assemblages across Switzerland. Our results show that attention-based modelling improves the prediction not only of individual species distributions, but also of assemblage composition across landscapes. From these predictions, we also obtained more accurate estimations of community indices, such as species richness and community-weighted trait statistics. Overall, this study demonstrates how the flexibility of deep learning enables application-driven integration of diverse data sources. It highlights the value of combining large-scale presence-only observational data with a smaller, but high-quality set of vegetation plots. Our approach aims to bridge species distributions modelling and trait-based community ecology, offering scalable and ecologically grounded predictions of biodiversity patterns.

How to cite: van Tiel, N., Zbinden, R., Vanalli, C., Pellissier, L., and Tuia, D.: A trait-informed deep learning model to map species distributions and assemblages of Swiss flora, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1031, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1031, 2026.

Artificial light at night associated with road infrastructure in Atlantic Forest landscapes may act as an important ecological disturbance, affecting the composition, behavior, and connectivity of invertebrate communities. In this study, we evaluated biodiversity associated with a road section in the Tapiraí region, São Paulo, Brazil, with a focus on the potential effects of artificial night lighting on local entomofauna. We applied an integrative approach combining environmental DNA, DNA metabarcoding, and traditional entomological sampling in order to improve taxon detection across multiple environmental compartments. A total of 37 samples were analyzed, including water, soil, bulk insect samples, and spider webs. Sequencing generated 6,189,756 reads, of which 1,372,723 showed at least 95 percent similarity to reference sequences in the BOLD database. Molecular analysis detected 1,393 OTUs distributed across 12 phyla, 24 classes, 53 orders, 193 families, 122 genera, and 24 species, with a clear dominance of Arthropoda, which accounted for 1,342,733 reads. Sampling points 2 and 3 showed the highest numbers of identified reads, with 514,864 and 504,931, respectively. Spider web and bulk samples contributed most strongly to read number and OTU richness, while water and soil samples complemented detection by revealing exclusive taxa. In parallel, the entomological survey recorded 176 unique taxa distributed across 12 orders and 95 families, with Diptera, Coleoptera, and Lepidoptera together accounting for more than 70 percent of the recorded diversity. The expressive richness of nocturnal Lepidoptera, scarab beetles, fireflies, aquatic insects, and native bees indicates high ecological sensitivity of the area to artificial lighting effects, including phototactic attraction, disorientation, reproductive disruption, increased predation risk, barrier effects, and impairment of ecosystem services such as pollination and nutrient cycling. Our results demonstrate that integrating molecular ecology with classical entomology provides a robust strategy for rapid biodiversity assessment and for evaluating the potential ecological impacts of illuminated road infrastructure in highly diverse tropical landscapes.

How to cite: Faria, S.: Illuminated Roads, Hidden Impacts: An Integrated Assessment of Invertebrate Biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1033, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1033, 2026.

Target 15 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework has driven the development of frameworks to help organisations understand, monitor, and disclose their biodiversity risks and impacts. The growing momentum to standardise and improve corporate nature-related assessments has led to the development of varied guidelines for the use of metrics to measure organisations’ pressures, impacts on state-of-nature (SON) and responses. Across these frameworks, pressure and response metrics are relatively well-standardised, while which state-of-nature metric organisations should use to quantify their impact on and exposure to nature degradation remains an open question. In this essay, we review current guidelines for corporate SON measurement and metric selection that have emerged after a first wave of standardisation efforts for corporate disclosures. We identify three key problems that prevent specific recommendation of named SON metrics for a company, given its economic and ecological context. First, unclear and unharmonized applicability and quality criteria have prevented users from having a clear idea of what would describe a suitable metric for their context. Second, a lack of evidence collation and generation has prevented users from evaluating the performance of metrics against these criteria. Third, poor structuring of how criteria are used in the selection process has hindered an intuitive filtration of metrics. We argue that the incipient second wave of standardisation, represented by efforts such as the Nature Measurement Protocol, must produce selection guidance that overcomes these three problems. We discuss how this can be done by: proposing harmonised applicability and quality criteria derived from first-wave frameworks; scaling up evidence gathering for the performance of metrics against criteria; and structuring applicability and quality assessments to direct users towards suitable named metrics, given their context. In resolving these issues, second-wave guidance frameworks can help scale up the rate of disclosures of state-of-nature metrics towards achieving Target 15 by 2030.

How to cite: Sanchez Ortiz, K. and Stimpson, B.: Overcoming limitations in selection guidelines for state-of-nature metrics in corporate assessments, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1038, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1038, 2026.

Terrestrial ecosystems play a pivotal role in mitigating climate change by sequestering a significant portion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, the stability of these vital carbon sinks is increasingly threatened by the rising frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme weather events, particularly severe heatwaves. While it is widely recognized that extreme heatwaves are increasingly regulating interannual variability in terrestrial carbon uptake, the precise climatic thresholds at which ecosystem functions and carbon assimilation capacities break down remain poorly constrained. Traditional assessments relying on daily-aggregated data often obscure transient but critical physiological responses, limiting our predictive capabilities. To address this critical knowledge gap, we leverage high-frequency, sub-daily observations from the Himawari-8 geostationary satellite to track the real-time response of regional gross primary production (GPP) to escalating thermal stress across a temperate forest-dominated region. Our high-resolution analysis identifies a distinct, nonlinear tipping point in carbon assimilation behavior. Specifically, we observe that once canopy temperatures surpass a critical thermal threshold of 31.2 °C, GPP exhibits a rapid and sustained downturn. Beyond this tipping point, carbon assimilation decreases at a striking rate of 0.48 umol CO2 m-2 s-1 for every additional degree Celsius. This physiological degradation is most acute during peak midday hours. During this temporal window, the detrimental convergence of elevated solar radiation and critically high vapor pressure deficit forces rapid stomatal closure, inducing a sub-daily physiological collapse that is partially obscured in conventional daily-scale assessments. The severe 2018 heatwave served as a clear, landscape-scale demonstration of this underlying ecosystem instability. During this prolonged extreme event, the widespread exceedance of local thermal limits triggered massive spatial divergence in ecosystem carbon uptake, resulting in a substantial loss of event-scale regional carbon assimilation. Ultimately, these findings demonstrate that terrestrial carbon sinks can exhibit threshold-like instability under extreme heat. Our results underscore the urgent need to integrate sub-daily monitoring and resolve high-frequency climate-ecosystem interactions to accurately project carbon cycle responses in a warming world.

How to cite: Kim, J., Jeong, S., and Cho, Y.: Increasing vulnerability of terrestrial carbon sinks to extreme heatwaves beyond critical thermal thresholds , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1041, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1041, 2026.

Wetlands in arid environments function as critical ecological refugia, delivering disproportionately high biodiversity value and ecosystem services relative to their limited spatial extent. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia lies at the convergence of major Palearctic and Central Asian migratory flyways, supporting an estimated three billion migratory birds (~300 species) annually. Despite their ecological significance, wetlands across the region are increasingly threatened by land-use change, hydrological alteration, and industrial expansion, necessitating scalable and cross-sectoral conservation solutions.

This study presents a corporate biodiversity stewardship framework that operationalizes wetland conservation within an industrial landscape while explicitly aligning with the principles of the Ramsar Convention, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 6, 13, 14, and 15), and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A systematic conservation planning approach was implemented integrating: (i) geospatial mapping and inventory of wetlands; (ii) biodiversity significance assessment using 13 ecological criteria harmonized with national priorities and global standards; and (iii) designation of high-value sites as Biodiversity Protection Areas (BPAs), followed by targeted interventions including ecological restoration, hydrological enhancement, invasive species control, and stakeholder engagement.

By 2025, 35 BPAs have been established, including 22 wetlands supporting migratory waterbirds associated with the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds flyway network. Monitoring results indicate improved habitat quality, enhanced ecological integrity, and increased utilization by wetland-dependent taxa. These wetlands collectively support over 400 plant species, 300 bird species, 47 mammals, 35 reptiles, and 119 invertebrates, with further biodiversity gains anticipated through improved habitat connectivity and adaptive management.

The framework directly contributes to global biodiversity and sustainability targets, including ecosystem restoration (GBF Target 2), expansion of conserved areas (Target 3), sustainable use (Target 5), climate resilience through nature-based solutions (Target 8), biodiversity mainstreaming (Target 14), and corporate accountability (Target 15). Simultaneously, it advances Ramsar’s “wise use” principle and supports SDG targets related to water security, climate action, and life below water and on land.

This work demonstrates how biodiversity conservation can be effectively mainstreamed into corporate governance and operational systems, offering a replicable, science-based model for private-sector leadership in wetland conservation. 

How to cite: Sarwar, D. G.: Corporate Stewardship of Wetlands in Arid Landscapes: A Scalable Model for Biodiversity Conservation in Saudi Arabia, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1042, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1042, 2026.

Climate change is impacting forests, resulting in a myriad of ecological changes. New digital tools are increasingly being used to help monitor trees in forest plots and provide high spatial resolution information on the status of key ecological indicators such as biomass. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is one such tool; however, in tall, dense forest canopies, it is limited by occlusion which results in less accurate indicators. To overcome this limitation, we integrated arborist Canopy Access techniques with Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS), Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) and Canopy Laser Scanning (CLS), and made a detailed comparison of the different methods. We delineated a 50 x 50 m plot and raised a TLS into all trees with a Diameter at Brest Height (BDH) ≥ 60 cm (n=8) using arborist methods, resulting in the CLS dataset.  Then, an MLS was used to retrieve point clouds of all trees which were deemed safely climbable with a DBH ≥ 40 cm (n=12). Each tree was scanned twice for its whole length (once non each side) using the MSL and an arborist abseiling approach. This resulted in a complete tree characterization and a novel method to rapidly scan trees – which has not been implemented before. From the resulting 3D point clouds, and array of ecological indicators were computed, including stem volume and biomass, tree height, canopy volume, branch length and total volume. Estimates of ecological indicators from TLS+CLS and MLS, were found to be comparable. However, the approach to sample trees using MSL was by far the least time consuming – allowing for more rapid characterization of trees in plots – the amount of time required to hoist a TSL in the canopy being relatively long and the process complex. This study provides a novel approach which can be applied to monitor safely climbable trees with forest plots, in a more rapid manner than CLS, and resulting in comparable ecological indicators. This method also overcomes the issue of occlusion in dense canopies inherent in TLS. Such information is essential to understanding how climate change is impacting forests and can help inform adaptation.

How to cite: Wingate, V. and Hepner, S.: Integrating arborist Canopy Access techniques with Mobile and Terrestrial Laser Scanning: retrieving key ecological indicators from improved tree and forest plot 3D point clouds, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1046, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1046, 2026.

For billions of years, the celestial sphere has acted as a universal clock and reliable map for life on Earth. As a result, many species have evolved to regulate critical biological, physiological, and behavioral functions by the regular cycles of sunlight, moonlight, and starlight and navigate by recognizable patterns in the sky. These celestial patterns and photocycles are so fundamentally intertwined with life that many species have come to depend on them at a molecular level. Similarly, the use and importance of these celestial signals is widespread across human cultures.

Accelerating human activity in space has the potential to significantly disrupt the natural patterns and cycles that characterize Earth’s celestial sphere. This is not a hypothetical or distant problem, as rapidly decreasing launch costs and accelerating technological innovation are opening outer space to an increasingly diverse array of human activity—including plans to display advertising, art, and other messages from low Earth orbit, as well as space-based climate engineering projects which seek to provide widespread nighttime illumination or solar power from orbit. Many of these proposed use cases would require thousands of space mirrors in low-Earth orbit in order to provide sufficient lighting, with one current proposal calling for 50,000 space mirrors by 2050, with plans to grow that number to 250,000 in the longer term. These space mirrors would be capable of providing additional sunlight up to 3 hours post-twilight and would have widespread impacts on aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as socioeconomic impacts on human societies.

Thus, the rapid commercialization of space and lack of regulatory clarity present an urgent need for comprehensive technical, ethical, and regulatory frameworks, particularly for those spaceflight activities most likely to be realized in the coming years. This poster will explore current and proposed space missions which risk introducing significant light pollution into the celestial sphere and their connections on Earth-bound ecosystems and human cultures.

How to cite: Timpe, M.: Under a False Moon: The Rise of Space-Based Light Pollution, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1047, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1047, 2026.

Biodiversity offsets aim to compensate for the ecological impacts of development in protected species’ habitat. Despite the increasing prominence of offsets in conservation governance worldwide, their effectiveness at producing positive species-level outcomes is rarely explored empirically. Here, we evaluate US Species Conservation Banks in California, one of the longest-running biodiversity offset programs. We used 30 years of on-site species monitoring data across 36 sites to understand the consistency, scientific adequacy, and ecological outcomes of conservation banks for four focal species.

Overall, we find that most banks are not required to demonstrate the presence or breeding success of target species to sell credits for them. We also find that banks differ significantly in quality, measured by consistency of focal species presence, breeding, and achievement of habitat goals. In our sample, 23% of banks fail to document any presence of the target species on-site and 56% of banks fail to demonstrate successful breeding. Detection rates varied by up to two orders of magnitude across banks within species, with no evidence of improving outcomes over time. Banks’ ecological success varied by species: for two of our four species, most banks produced consistently low or zero detections of their target species despite substantial accumulated survey effort, while for the other two species, banks consistently provided occupied habitat. We found that conservation banks have highly inconsistent monitoring and management programs that do not align with best scientific practices, inhibiting analyses of program success. Notably, we find that adaptive management is often invoked to shift monitoring practices, resulting in inconsistencies both between and within banks. Species monitoring data for impact sites was not available, precluding an assessment of ecological equivalence between impacted and protected habitats. Despite these data limitations, when combined with evidence on the low additionality of banks in California, our results indicate that this long-running biodiversity offset program provides marginal and highly inconsistent biodiversity benefits over several decades. As governments increasingly adopt offsets as a central mechanism to resolve conflicts between development and biodiversity, our analysis highlights the uncertainty of positive outcomes for species even under mature regulatory frameworks.

How to cite: Verner-Crist, M.: Inconsistencies and Underperformance in US Biodiversity Offsets Policy, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1049, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1049, 2026.

Agroecosystems provide a good example of a socio-ecological system in which ecological and social dimensions interact and shape one another. Here, ecosystem services emerge through interactions among ecological processes, governance structures, and stakeholder practices. Natural pest control (NPC) is a well-established and increasingly recognised ecosystem service in ecological research, yet limited attention has been paid to how it is understood, operationalised, and framed within regulatory and practical contexts. As a result, its potential contribution to system resilience may depend on how it is interpreted, governed, and implemented across science, policy, and practice.

The study conducted within the IMPRESS project examines whether and how scientific knowledge about NPC is translated into legal frameworks and how these align with stakeholder understandings and on-farm practices. To address these questions, the research is based on a review of nearly 70 relevant EU and national policy documents and 30 semi-structured interviews conducted across five European countries. In addition, the diversity of on-farm practices, as well as the barriers to and enabling factors for the adoption of NPC practices, was assessed through a farmer survey across the same five countries.

Results show that while NPC is well defined in ecological research it remains weakly defined in regulatory frameworks. However, even policy-promoted “non-chemical alternatives” do not always reflect ecological understandings of NPC or its potential contributions to biodiversity and resilience. At the same time, stakeholders associate NPC with broader system-level benefits, such as maintaining ecological balance, reducing dependency on external inputs, and supporting long-term sustainability. However, uncertainties about effectiveness and existing production-oriented norms limit its uptake.

The findings reveal a misalignment between scientific concepts, policy framings, and stakeholder perceptions. Such misalignment is particularly important because ecological processes and social responses are closely related, and effective governance depends on some degree of shared understanding across science, policy, and practice. Addressing this gap therefore requires not only clearer definitions, but also stronger integration of knowledge across domains in order to support more coherent governance and more resilient agroecosystems.

How to cite: Misiune, I., Tamasauskaite-Janicke, G., and Janusevskaite, G.: Socio-Ecological Systems Perspective on Natural Pest Control: Bridging Science, Policy, and Practice, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1022, 2026.

Why does biodiversity matter, and what constitute ethical forms of engagement with diverse life on earth?  This research describes how two texts written more than two millennia apart – Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac and the classical Chinese text, the Zhuangzi – use narratives to shed light on these questions. Both texts offer suggestive insights regarding the value of diverse forms of life, but more importantly, they describe virtues that can inform biodiversity research and conservation practice today.  The focus on virtues – as specific dispositions or ways of being in the world – draws attention to the ethos of biodiversity conservation: how humans approach and engage with plants, animals, and ecological systems more broadly.

In both Leopold and Zhuangzi, narratives help to articulate a set of relationally-oriented and contextually-sensitive virtues toward diverse forms of life. Leopold, for example, tells the story of the last grizzly bear in Escudilla in the American Southwest, describing how the bear’s killing reflects flawed conceptions of human progress.  Zhuangzi, whose text includes creatures ranging from fish to cicadas to birds, offers narratives that celebrate the diverse forms of embodiment that exist in the world.  His playful stories of giant gourds and gnarled trees challenge narrow human perspectives and invite the reader to consider broader possibilities.  Although they have distinctive approaches, Leopold and Zhuangzi both emphasize engagement, receptivity, perspective-taking, and the capacity to overcome preconceptions as critical in guiding human relations with diverse forms of life. These virtues are conveyed through narratives that engage readers both intellectually and emotionally, cultivating the habits of mind they enjoin.  For contemporary biodiversity conservation, these relational virtues carry two important implications: they support approaches that balance continuity and dynamism in an era of rapid environmental change, and they encourage continued, direct engagement with biodiversity, even as remote sensing and other technologies help to expand ecological knowledge.

How to cite: Hourdequin, M.: Narratives, Virtues, and Biodiversity: Perspectives from Leopold and Zhuangzi, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1045, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1045, 2026.

Next to the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (TCA) has identified challenges to transformative change, key principles and approaches to address them, and strategies and actions to bring about transformative change. The five strategies call i. to conserve and regenerate places of value to nature and people, ii. to drive systemic change in the sectors most responsible for biodiversity loss and nature’s decline, iii. to transform economic systems for nature and equity, iv. to transform governance systems, to be integrative, inclusive, accountable and adaptive, and v. to shift societal views and values to recognize human-nature interconnectedness. The strategies are divided into 22 actions. While the strategies and actions are complementary and all individually important, decision-making and implementation practice likely need to prioritize some over others. Therefore, with this “activity poster”, the conference participants of the World Biodiversity Forum are invited to think about their individual expert opinion on how the TCA strategies and actions should be prioritized to support a transformative change towards sustainable development. This is done by applying the Q approach to consensus building, a method envisioned to support consensus decision-making in multilateral governance processes, for example in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) or under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Yet, the approach is not limited to political negotiations and can also support discussions among, for example, academics and/or non-governmental organizations. Using the Q approach to consensus building can generally help valuing and recognizing diverse perspectives, making discussions more inclusive and meaningful. Interested conference participants get sets of cards to rank their priorities of the TCA strategies and actions, take a photo of the rankings, and are asked to fill in a short follow-up survey in which they upload the photos to an online repository. The rankings will then be used to identify shared perspectives among the participants, which will be circulated after the conference and may stimulate further discussions.

How to cite: Geschke, J.: Deep Thought: Invitation to prioritize the TCA strategies and actions using the Q approach to consensus building, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1050, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1050, 2026.

Biodiversity finance and conservation strategies, in the face of escalating climate action and corporate priorities, must undergo transformative change. To be  impactful, they need to move beyond top-down, externally designed solutions and embrace community-led approaches rooted in place-based, time-tested stewardship practices, particularly in ecosystems of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs).

Northeast India, a critical part of the Indo-Myanmar biodiversity hotspot, is home to diverse ethnic communities with constitutional protections for local governance. Despite a tradition of shifting cultivation, the region maintains around 70% forest cover, fostering rich biodiversity. However, to ensure the sustainability and resilience of biodiversity conservation in these landscapes, there is an urgent need for a shift away from externally templated forest management models, usually promoted by the state, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), and increasingly, the Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) market.

Recent work by some like-minded organizations highlights the compelling potential of community-led stewardship model. This approach demonstrates the critical role IPLCs play in sustaining socio-cological resilience of their bio-cultural landscapes. Community stewardship framework integrates care, knowledge, and agency, generating evidence of the profound, culturally rooted, multi-dimensional connections communities have with their landscapes and their significance for sustainability and resilience.

By assisting local communities and their organisations, in deploying participatory tools like GIS-based resource mapping, care economy tracking, and biodiversity assessments, Landstack empowers local communities to manage their landscapes. These stewardship actions, grounded in traditional knowledge and ethical care, present a holistic, locally-driven approach to biodiversity conservation that balances global conservation goals with local needs.

This model challenges the limitations of state-driven, canopy-density focused forest management and the commodification of biodiversity in PES markets. It positions stewardship as a long-term, locally led, non-market strategy that addresses both climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation, through giving-back and soft touch forestry by the communities.

Through community-based Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV), Landstack enables transparent tracking of stewardship practices by local indicators, ensuring better integration into policy and financing. This work shifts IPLCs from passive beneficiaries or project manager, to active agents of change, offering a transformative, just, and sustainable model for biodiversity conservation.

How to cite: Choudhury, P. R., Thong, P., and Aggarwal, A.: Community Stewardship for Transformative Biodiversity Conservation in Northeast India, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1024, 2026.