HARMON

In a context of global change, the importance of information provided by long-term biodiversity monitoring is increasingly evident. In Catalonia, generating this knowledge is clearly framed among the essential tasks of the Observatory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity. HARMON is a project of the Observatory's Technical Office, coordinated by CREAF, CTFC, and the Information and Knowledge Service of the General Dictatorate for Environmental Policies and Natural Environment of the Government of Catalonia, and is made possible thanks to the involvement of all the entities, administrations, and individuals working in this field.

HARMON develops a biodiversity monitoring database, defined for projects that aim to document temporal changes in the status of animal and plant populations, as well as habitats. To date, HARMON has identified nearly 400 natural heritage monitoring projects in Catalonia. Some of these monitoring efforts are part of large-scale projects with citizen participation, while others are developed at the local level, for example, in a specific protected natural area. The project harmonizes the parameters studied in each monitoring effort under common objectives, establishes basic parameters for evaluating the exact nature of each monitoring activity, seeks synergies between projects, find data gaps, determines which monitoring activities should be promoted, and proposes ways to improve information flows and joint analysis. HARMON is based on collective work, expert knowledge, consensus, and the needs of the administration, and it is inspired by similar initiatives implemented at the national and international levels.