Talk:Biodiversity Monitoring Switzerland

Notability

Dear Kvng

The following 3 references are the most relevant for the article:

1) FOEN: Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring BDM. Description of Methods and Indicators. Environmental Studies No. 1410, Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, Bern, 2014. online available at https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/en/home/topics/biodiversity/publications-studies/publications/biodiversity-monitoring.html

2) Website of the Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring http://www.biodiversitymonitoring.ch/en/home.html

3) Website of the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN (German, French and Italian only) https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/de/home/themen/biodiversitaet/zustand/biodiversitaet--monitoringprogramme.html

I hope this helps for the review process.

@BDM Autor: these do not appear to WP:RELIABLE sources. Specifically, I question whether they have editorial control or are independent of the subject. We are looking for coverage in newspapers, books and the like. ~Kvng (talk) 16:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Dear Kvng

Thanks for your comment and sorry for having been too brief in answering them.

I suppose the following references to underpin the relevance of the article’s topic:

- Herzog F. & Franklin J. (2016): State-of-the-art practices in farmland biodiversity monitoring for North America and Europe. AMBIO 45:857–871. doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0799-0

This paper has been published in a peer-reviewed journal and gives an independent overview on the most important biodiversity monitoring programs worldwide. It provides a broader context for Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring BDM presented in the article.

- FOEN: Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring BDM. Description of Methods and Indicators. Environmental Studies No. 1410, Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, Bern, 2014.

There are plenty of scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals based on data from the Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring BDM (see http://www.biodiversitymonitoring.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/publikationen/1550_LISTEBDMPUB_2018_12_04.pdf), but most of them give only a short description of the methodology of the monitoring program and, for further details, refer to the Technical Report published by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN. In my opinion, this comprehensive work serves best as a reference for the “Methodology” section in my article. It has been published by a national authority which some sort of guarantees the reliability of the information.

- Weber D., Hintermann U., Zangger A. (2004): Scale and trends in species richness: considerations for monitoring biological diversity for political purposes. Global Ecology and Biogeography 13: 97–104.

This paper published in a peer-reviewed journal gives some background information on the design of the monitoring scheme as well as on the selection of indicators. “Global Ecology and Biogeography” is a highly rated, scientific journal, and the contribution has been peer-reviewed, which gives reliability to the article, despite the fact that the authors were/are working for the BDM program.

Although the article confers to a national program in Switzerland, it has broad relevance: The BDM program was established in order to fulfil one of the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (see Reference 10). Internationally, it was one of the first programs that covers a certain area with a systematic grid and thus samples species richness in a wide range of habitats. It therefore served as an example for other similar programs (see Reference 17 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP)). Data from the BDM program are used to calculate European-wide indicators on biodiversity, e.g. the European Grassland Butterfly Index, see EEA Technical Report (Reference 19).

I would like to ask you to consider this information for the further review process. Thanks in advance. BDM Autor (talk) 10:19, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

@BDM Autor: Based on your description and the published abstract the Herzog paper may be a good reference for establishing notability however one of the authors is affiliated with a Swiss biodiversity firm which is may have connections with Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring. The FOEN paper does not appear to be WP:INDEPENDENT so can't be used to establish notability. It is probably useful for verification so no need to remove it. Despite being published in a peer-reviewed journal, most would not consider the Weber paper to be WP:INDEPENDENT because of who authored it. It appears that we have less than one qualifying source at this time. Wikipedia's inclusion standards for articles on organizations are quite high due to organizations who wish to use Wikipedia to raise their online profile. Finally, I note there is no Biodiversity monitoring article on Wikipedia, I encourage you to start there. ~Kvng (talk) 14:26, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

@Kvng: Dear Kvng, thank you for your response. I added some more references to emphasize that the data from the described project are used Europe-wide (see references 23, 24) and that the project is conducted in an international framework (see reference 18) and therefore corroborate the project’s importance. It is in the nature of things that the data from the Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring are integrated in various biodiversity indicators which are widely published, but without describing the program itself in detail. However, I added some references of peer-reviewed papers describing research that has been conducted using Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring data. Furthermore, I also added a reference showing that the data are used by Swiss government for biodiversity policy. At WP:RELIABLE sources it is advised to use academic and peer-reviewed publications, especially review articles (instead of research papers). In my opinion, the paper published by Herzog & Franklin in AMBIO fully meets this criterium. Felix Herzog is an independent researcher employed at Agroscope, a governmental research institute in Switzerland. He has no affiliation with the firm that carries out the project coordination of the Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring. Last but not least: The Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring gets also attention by national media. For example, field work and results of the program are described in a new documentary film by the Swiss Radio Television SRG (see reference 9, in French and German only). BDM Autor (talk) 11:31, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@BDM Autor: do you think any of the new references should be considered one of the WP:THREE best sources to demonstrate notability?

Peer-reviewed academic publications are considered reliable sources for the subjects they cover, in this case I presume the subject is biodiversity monitoring. Though I don't doubt there is an affiliation, I would be surprised if these sources present independent significant coverage of Biodiversity Monitoring Switzerland. If I have assumed incorrectly, please let me know.

Making a case for notability, and thus inclusion in the encyclopedia, should not be complicated; The answer is WP:42. Not all topics meet this requirement. Articles about organizations are particularly scrutinized. ~Kvng (talk) 16:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Kvng: The following references are proposed to be the three best sources WP:THREE:

[2] “Die Biodiversität beobachten - Nach wie vor eine vielfältige Flora in der Schweiz”, an article written by by Gregor Klaus, a free-lance journalist, and published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. It gives a general and comprehensive overview on the aims and scope of the Swiss biodiversity monitoring program (significant coverage). It is published by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the most renown daily newspaper in the German speaking part of Switzerland (reliable source) and written by a nationally well-known journalist with no affiliation to the project coordination office nor the governmental office FOEN (independent).

[1] Herzog F. & Franklin J. (2016): State-of-the-art practices in farmland biodiversity monitoring for North America and Europe. AMBIO 45:857–871. The review gives a broader context of the Swiss biodiversity monitoring program and compares it to other similar programs, thus showing how the program is embedded in a series of similar programs in other countries (significant coverage of the topic). It has been published by AMBIO, a reputable peer-reviewed journal for Environmental Sciences published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (impact factor of 3.6). This scholarly material cited by other (independent) researchers is assumed to meet the criteria of reliability. Both authors do not have any affiliation with the program (independent source).

[22] Zingg S. et al. (2018): Landscape-scale effects of land use intensity on birds and butterflies. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 267:119-128. This research paper describes the sampling design for measuring species diversity in landscapes in the frame of the Swiss biodiversity monitoirng. Furthermore, it illustrates how data that have been collected by this program can be used to carry out applied research (significant coverage of the topic). The research has been conducted by a team of researchers of the University of Bern and the Bern University of Applied Sciences. The study is part of the first author’s PhD project funded by the Foundation Sur-la-Croix, Foundation Temperatio and the Canton of Aargau. None of the authors has affiliation with the program (independent source). The research has been published recently by Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, an international peer-reviewed journal (impact factor of 3.5). This scholarly material cited by another independent team of researchers from Sweden and Finland is assumed to meet the criteria of reliability.

To conclude, these three references should help to corroborate the articles notability. BDM Autor (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2019 (UTC)