EVA Reports
2026 EVA Annual report [PDF]
This tenth annual report of the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) summarizes the status of the consortium, its projects, and its publications.
In March 2026, our consortium contained 110 EVA databases with 2,328,036 vegetation plots, of which 91% were georeferenced. From these plots, 76% were under the semi-restricted regime and 17% under the restricted regime, while the other 7% are open access.
The EVA database focusing on resurveyed plots, called ResurveyEurope, already includes 529 individual datasets with 575,799 observations from 153,480 plots. We are open to new datasets covering resurvey projects, especially from southern Europe and other underrepresented regions.
In total, EVA data have been made available for 278 research projects, including both core EVA and ReSurveyEurope (see the full list here).
Since the last report, EVA members have produced 10 new journal publications based on the combination of vegetation data from two or more European countries.
This year, we highlight the study of Midolo et al. (2025) to estimate changes in alpha diversity across European habitats, using the core EVA dataset to detect declining trends from 1960 to 1980, but the opposing trends from 2000 to 2020. EVA data was also used in advanced ecological modelling for predicting the co-occurrence of plant species and classifying plant communities with large language models (Leblanc et al. 2025), and for mapping the distribution of EUNIS habitat types at high spatial resolution across Europe (Si-Moussi et al. 2025). Other studies focused on conservation applications by analyzing the diversity implications of planting European trees outside their native distribution range (Bricca et al. 2025),the conservation assessment of endangered species through plant communities (Vasheniak et al. 2025) and the influence of land use and emissions scenarios on future European climate (Sieber et al. 2026). European vegetation plot data was also used to study the niche expansion and phylogeography of the Salix retusa complex (Pitter et al. 2025), the drivers of understory forest composition at the European scale (Sánchez-Dávila et al. 2025), the macroecology of European parasitic plants (Fahs et al. 2025), and the classification of European inland saline seasonal wetlands as a new input to update and improve the EuroVegChecklist (Iemelianova et al. 2025).
EVA data has also been used for 15 conference presentations, two master theses and several reports and pre-print publications. All publications and reports are listed in the EVA website.
We thank all data contributors and congratulate project leaders for these achievements.
Borja Jiménez-Alfaro, Ilona Knollová and the EVA Coordinating Board
April 2026
EVA projects FINISHED in the last year
- Conserving intraspecific diversification in a warmer world – a case study on endemic high-mountain plants of the Pyrenees (EVA project 80) – Pau Carnicero Campmany
- Managing plant species translocations: using genomic tools to unravel interactions between adaptation to climate and adaptation to habitat fragmentation (EVA project 113) – Frederik Van Daele
- Formalized classification of European Mediterranean and temperate pine forests (EVA project 144) – Gianmaria Bonari
- Plant diversity conservation within Emerald Network (EVA project 119) – Alessandro Chiarucci
- An equilibrium theory of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: a 300-year perspective (EVA project 147) – Adam T. Clark
- Biodiversity assessments of wetlands using Bioscore3.0 (EVA project 176) – Ojaswi Sumbh
- The European Commission’s Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (EVA project 181) – Camino Liquete
- The biogeography and evolution of willow species (Salix L.) of the European mountain systems (EVA project 186) – Loic Pittet
- Viola jooi Janka communities in Europe (EVA project 191) – Iryna Dmytrash-Vatseba
- Beta-diversity tree layer effect on the herbaceous layer of the forest (EVA project 193) – Jesús Sánchez-Dávila
- Species-abundance distributions (SADs) and species trait distributions (STDs) in Festuco-Brometea grasslands (EVA project 194) – Jürgen Dengler
- MAMBO: Modern approaches to the monitoring of biodiversity (EVA project 196) – Lukáš Picek
- Characteristics of plant dark diversity in Saksfjed Wildernes and the implications for conservation of novel ecosystems (EVA project 207) – Aksel Youden Munkholm
- The biogeography and evolution of willow species (Salix L.) of the European mountain systems (EVA project 237) – Loic Pittet.
- The usage of species observations for locating potential EUNIS habitats (EVA project 238) – Sander Mücher
- Pollinators typical of habitats protected under the Habitats Directive (PollHab) (EVA project 241) – Milan Chytrý
EVA projects CANCELLED in the last year
- Transposing biodiversity conservation – transposable elements as drivers of genetic diversity (EVA project 124) – Hanne De Kort
- Alpine and subalpine vegetation in Southeastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Caucasus: patterns of functional and phylogenetic diversity (EVA project 161) – Daniel Szokala
- GREENET - Grassland conservation across European landscapes protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services with ecological networks (EVA project 195) – Elias Kapitany
- INtegrated Spatial PlannIng across REalms for biodiversity conservation and human development in a context of change (INSPIRE) (EVA project 206) – Martin Jung
- Factors involved in the invasion of alien woody plants of Europe (EVA project 256) – Katrine Østerrøgild Bus
Reference list of new EVA publications
- Bricca A., Jiménez-Alfaro B., Chytrý M., Chytrý K., Padullés Cubino J., Fernández-González F., Ciaramella D., Alessi N., Argagnon O., Cerabolini B., Chiarucci A., Tuan Dang-Le A., Dalle Fratte M., Dziuba T., Kavgacı A., Jandt U., Niinemets Ü, Šibíková M, Vassilev K., Valachovič M, Willner W. & Bonari G. 2025. Biodiversity within and beyond the native distribution of tree species: The case of Pinus nigra forests in Europe. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 34, e70036. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.70036
- Fahs N., Axmanová I., Svenning J.-C., Padullés Cubino J., Biurrun I., Boch S., Campos J.A., Čarni A., Dengler J., Garbolino E., Heinken T., Knotková K. & Těšitel J. 2025. Parasitic plants in Europe: ecological niches and spatial patterns. Plant Biology 27: 1285–1299. https://doi.org/10.1111/plb.70099
- Iemelianova S., Dítě D., Dítě Z., Willner W., Bergmeier E., Pérez-Haase A., Dziuba T., Aćić S., Ćuk M., Ćušterevska R., Dubyna D., Vassilev K. & Chytrý M. 2025. Annual Vegetation of Saline Seasonal Wetlands (Crypsietea aculeatae) in Europe. Applied Vegetation Science 28(4): e70044. https://doi.org/10.1111/avsc.70044
- Leblanc C., Bonnet P., Servajean M., Thuiller W., Chytrý M., Aćić S., Argagnon O., Biurrun I., Bonari G., Bruelheide H., Campos J.A., Čarni A., Ćušterevska R., De Sanctis M., Dengler J., Dziuba T., Garbolino E., Jandt U., Jansen F., Lenoir J., Moeslund J.E., Pérez-Haase A., Pielech R., Sibik J., Stančić Z., Uogintas D., Wohlgemuth T. & Joly A. 2025. Learning the syntax of plant assemblages. Nature plants 11: 2026–2040. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02105-7
- Midolo G., Clark A.T., Chytrý M., Essl F., Dullinger S., Jandt U., Bruelheide H., Argagnon O., Biurrun I., Chiarucci A., Ćušterevska R., De Frenne P., De Sanctis M., Dengler J., Divíšek J., Dziuba T., Ejrnæs R., Garbolino E., Illa E., Jentsch A., Jiménez-Alfaro B., Lenoir J., Moeslund J.E., Napoleone F., Pielech R., Rumpf S.B., Sanz-Zubizarreta I., Silva V., Svenning J.-C., Swacha G., Večeřa M., Vynokurov D. & Keil P. 2025. Six decades of losses and gains in alpha diversity of European plant communities. Ecology Letters 28 (11): e70248. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70248
- Pittet L., Kosiński P., Wagner N.D. & Hörandl E. 2025. Niche expansion of polyploid cytotypes shaped the phylogeographical history of the Salix retusa complex in the European Alpine System. Annals of Botany 136 (4): 903–917. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf163
- Sánchez-Dávila J., Lenoir J., Stefańska-Krzaczek E., Biurrun I., Wohlgemuth T., Campos J.A., Svenning J.C., Bonari G. & Padullés Cubino J. 2025. Canopy Composition Outperforms Macroenvironment in Explaining European Forest Understory Composition. Global Ecology and Biogeography 34 (7): e70079. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.70079
- Sieber P., Karger D.N., Zimmermann N.E., Si-Moussi S., Thuiller W., Midolo G., Chytrý M., Axmanová I., Schwaab J., Davin E.L., Leclair M., Kambach S., Bruelheide H., Hickler T., Stančić Z., Biurrun I., Güler B., Dengler J., Divíšek J., Verburg P.H. & Seneviratne S.I. 2026. Climate response to Nature Future scenarios in a regional Earth System Model. Nature Communication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70284-8
- Si-Moussi S., Hennekens S., Mücher S., De Keersmaecker W.D., Chytrý M., Agrillo E., Attorre F., Biurrun I., Bonari G., Čarni A., Ćušterevska R., Dziuba T., Ecker K., Güler B., Jandt Y., Jiménez-Alfaro B., Lenoir J., Svenning J.-C., Swacha G. & Thuiller W. 2025. EUNIS habitat maps: enhancing thematic and spatial resolution for Europe through machine learning. Scientific Data 12, 1976 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06235-7
- Sumbh O., Hellegers M., Barbarossa V., Ćušterevska R., Jiménez-Alfaro B., Kozub Ł., Napoleone F., Stančić Z. & Schipper A.M. 2025. Developing and Validating Species Distribution Models for Wetland Plants Across Europe. Ecol Evol 15: e71157. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.71157
- Vasheniak I., Dmytrash-Vatseba I., Didukh Y. & Dumitrița Chirilă S. 2025. Viola jooi: distribution, ecology and management with a focus on Ukraine. Biologia 80: 2277–2295. https://doi.org/….2024.123844