John Kennedy

The vast increase in biodiversity data generated through citizen science initiatives, alongside a growing suite of remote sensing products and advanced modelling tools, has opened new avenues for rapidly, accurately and efficiently monitoring species trends to inform conservation, management and policy. However, fully harnessing and integrating these diverse data sources and models remains underexplored, with efforts often concentrated in a limited number of developed countries. In this study, we (1) summarized two decades of eBird data across the island of Ireland and (2) combined 4 years of data with high‐spatiotemporal‐resolution remotely sensed information and Bayesian hierarchical occupancy models, to assess species occupancy and identify environmental drivers of occupancy, accounting for imperfect detection. We applied a single‐species multi‐year occupancy model to the Common Blackbird Turdus merula and a multi‐species multi‐year model to 14 species, validating model predictions using a systematic bird survey. Results show an exponential increase in eBird checklist submissions across the island of Ireland between 2002 and 2023. The single species model fitted the data well and accounted for several observation biases, and occupancy predictions resulted in high accuracy with an area under the curve or the receiver operating characteristic (AUC‐ROC) of 95.6% across years. The multi‐species model presented lack‐of‐fit, and model prediction accuracy varied across species and years: 14% were poor (AUC‐ROC < 60%), 34% fair (AUC‐ROC 60–70%) and 77% good (AUC‐ROC > 70%). Although more data are needed to improve fit in the multi‐species model and include rarer species in the analysis, our findings highlight the potential of integrating eBird citizen science data with high‐resolution remote sensing imagery to enhance current conservation, restoration and monitoring programmes. Assuming that citizen involvement and checklist submissions continue their current increasing trends, spatial and temporal data coverage will improve as well as model outputs. To guide this process, we offer guidelines for generating more ‘analysis‐friendly’ checklists based on the results of this study. All code used here is also provided to facilitate replication and adaptation by researchers and practitioners.

Declines in European bird populations are reported for decades but the direct effect of major anthropogenic pressures on such declines remains unquantified. Causal relationships between pressures and bird population responses are difficult to identify as pressures interact at different spatial scales and responses vary among species. Here, we uncover direct relationships between population time-series of 170 common bird species, monitored at more than 20,000 sites in 28 European countries, over 37 y, and four widespread anthropogenic pressures: agricultural intensification, change in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature change over the last decades. We quantify the influence of each pressure on population time-series and its importance relative to other pressures, and we identify traits of most affected species. We find that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders. Responses to changes in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature are more species-specific. Specifically, forest cover is associated with a positive effect and growing urbanisation with a negative effect on population dynamics, while temperature change has an effect on the dynamics of a large number of bird populations, the magnitude and direction of which depend on species' thermal preferences. Our results not only confirm the pervasive and strong effects of anthropogenic pressures on common breeding birds, but quantify the relative strength of these effects stressing the urgent need for transformative changes in the way of inhabiting the world in European countries, if bird populations shall have a chance of recovering.

The wide adoption of the recently coined fog and edge computing paradigms alongside conventional cloud computing creates a novel scenario, known as the cloud continuum, where services may benefit from the overall set of resources to optimize their execution. To operate successfully, such a cloud continuum scenario demands for novel management strategies, enabling a coordinated and efficient management of the entire set of resources, from the edge up to the cloud, designed in particular to address key edge characteristics, such as mobility, heterogeneity and volatility. The design of such a management framework poses many research challenges and has already promoted many initiatives worldwide at different levels. In this paper we present the results of one of these experiences driven by an EU H2020 project, focusing on the lessons learnt from a real deployment of the proposed management solution in three different industrial scenarios. We think that such a description may help understand the benefits brought in by a holistic cloud continuum management and also may help other initiatives in their design and development processes.

The wide adoption of the recently coined fog and edge computing paradigms alongside conventional cloud computing creates a novel scenario, known as the cloud continuum, where services may benefit from the overall set of resources to optimize their execution. To operate successfully, such a cloud continuum scenario demands for novel management strategies, enabling a coordinated and efficient management of the entire set of resources, from the edge up to the cloud, designed in particular to address key edge characteristics, such as mobility, heterogeneity and volatility. The design of such a management framework poses many research challenges and has already promoted many initiatives worldwide at different levels. In this paper we present the results of one of these experiences driven by an EU H2020 project, focusing on the lessons learnt from a real deployment of the proposed management solution in three different industrial scenarios. We think that such a description may help understand the benefits brought in by a holistic cloud continuum management and also may help other initiatives in their design and development processes.