The potential for integration of environmental data from regional stratifications into a European monitoring framework

The development of a co-ordinated system for monitoring European biodiversity that can provide policy makers with information to underpin the management of ecological resources requires an appropriate environmental stratification to facilitate sampling and data analysis. This paper quantifies the similarities between the European Environmental Stratification (EnS) and four regional stratifications to test whether the EnS is able to distinguish locally important environmental gradients. The results show that in general the EnS is comparable with regional stratifications, and resolves border effects where divergent environmental conditions are combined into dominant strata. However, some regional gradients are not discerned, illustrating the value of national stratifications to provide local detail within continental monitoring strata.