BiodivGreenCare - Development of biodiversity-enhancing and -preserving maintenance recommendations for urban green infrastructure and qualitative indicators for biodiversity measurement in municipalities

The research project "BiodivGrünpflege" is developing a nationwide applicable framework for the first time, with which municipalities can systematically record and specifically enhance the biodiversity impact of their public green spaces. The client is the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. The starting point is the recognition that common indicators such as green space share or tree stock provide only limited information about the actual ecological quality of urban areas. At the same time, comprehensive species mapping in cities is hardly practicable due to its high effort. The project therefore focuses on a central lever of municipal action: green space maintenance. Instead of measuring biodiversity primarily through species occurrence, a process-oriented approach is pursued, which focuses on maintenance regimes and recommendations. The aim is to define maintenance categories for different urban area types and to assess their biodiversity impact in a comprehensible way. Existing classification and information systems are merged and transferred into a uniform, comparable system that can be integrated into municipal green space information systems. An exemplary practical validation in selected municipalities checks the ecological plausibility of the developed categories and refines the assessment criteria. Based on this, the system is piloted and tested for its administrative feasibility - both in municipalities with existing digital control instruments and in those without such systems. The result is an application-oriented reference system for biodiversity-effective green maintenance that can be used nationwide. It enables municipalities to transparently document, compare, and strategically develop the quality of their maintenance practices, thus making a concrete contribution to strengthening urban biodiversity.