The health of ecosystems based on the ground beetle

© 2020 Ecopotential / Antonello Provenzale - EPFL scientists just published an open tool for predicting the dynamics of ground beetle populations - important bioindicators for sustainable park management and for monitoring ecosystems - in Italy's Gran Paradiso National Park. The tool incorporates satellite and other remote sensing data. Ground beetles may be creepy, but their presence is usually a sign of a healthy ecosystem and is appreciated for pest control in agriculture. Technically known as carabids, these critters are sensitive to environmental change, so the number of species that one can observe in an ecosystem shows how healthy a habitat is in terms of pollution or diversity of the ecosystem. In a collaboration with Italian scientists as part of the European project Ecopotential , EPFL scientists built a model to predict the dynamics of two carabid species across the landscape of Gran Paradiso National Park in the Graian Alps, in Northern Italy, now combining field measurement with advanced remote sensing. The results are published in PNAS and the open-model can be downloaded on GitHub. "The main result of this work, which I deem important, is to suggest that an integrated ecohydrological framework blending field evidence, both theoretical and remotely acquired, has contributed substantially to our understanding of key indicators of ecological well-being, carabid beetles, in complex environments like iconic mountains," explains Andrea Rinaldi who leads the Laboratory of Ecohydrology.