Identification of best practices for biodiversity recovery and public health interventions to prevent future epidemics and pandemics.
Background
Epidemics and pandemics, many of which are driven by emerging zoonotic and vector-borne diseases, are posing an increasing threat to global health and well-being. Preventing future outbreaks is therefore essential for safeguarding human welfare. Growing evidence supporting the idea that biodiversity benefits human health has led to a new paradigm in disease risk reduction. As a result, nature restoration initiatives aimed at enhancing biodiversity either alone or alongside public health measures are increasingly recognised as effective strategies for mitigating disease risks.
Despite this recognition, important knowledge gaps remain regarding the mechanisms linking biodiversity, ecosystem restoration, and disease dynamics. The BEPREP project seeks to address these gaps and provide practical guidance for disease prevention. Through spatially and temporally replicated field studies and experiments across 13 case-study sites in Europe and the tropics, the project aims to uncover the causal drivers of infection dynamics and identify effective ways to disrupt disease transmission pathways.
Duties and responsibilities
- SWOT-Analysis of nature restoration measures as a tool for disease risk mitigation.
- Investigate dyadic interactions and competition in a restoration framework.
- Meta-analysis and trait-based individual approaches of community turnover during habitat restoration.
- Mapping bat biodiversity and distribution using passive acoustic monitoring in beaver landscapes.
- Data management of large datasets.
- Process drone data and quantify habitat heterogeneity.
Publications
Embedding Biodiversity within One Health Position Paper in the Strategy for European Life Sciences. (2026). https://zenodo.org/records/21031938