Initiatives for establishment of a general program for monitoring of Norwegian nature were first taken in the 1990s. From 2002 this initiative has been the responsibility of a ’National program for mapping and surveying of biodiversity’ lead by an interdepartmental group. The work within the 'National program' har been organised into program periods, of which the second ended 2010. NatTOv, a project within the 'National program', started up in 2009 and has had as its main purpose to produce a consistent platform for monitoring of biodiversity in Norway. The NatTOV project has consisted of six work packages.
The main goal of the project has been to develop a consistent methodology for monitoring of nature types that cover a small total area with scattered occurrences over large parts of the country (and that can not be monitored by area(type) representative sampling designs within reasonable resource limits). Minor milestones of the project are:
- To improve presision and functionality of NiN as a system for mapping of nature types, through testing in the field.
- Establish an infrastructure for further work with modelling and monitoring of nature types.
- Testing of LiDAR as a tool for identifying rare nature types.
- Give recommendations on methodology for probability-based sampling of nature types for monitoring purposes, based on prediction modelling.
The NatTOv project as such was completed in Spring 2011, but the project will be continued as NatTOv II as part of work under the third period 2011–15 of the 'National program'. The main aim of the project will be to continue development of a consistent methodology for biodiversity monitoring in Norway. Four research tasks will be specifically addressed:
- Improvement of predictor variables for distribution modelling
- Elaboration of a new division into landscape types
- Investigate statistical properties of unequal probability sampling designs
- Develop a consistent plan for monitoring of nature types in Norway based upon the methodological platform in NatTOv I