To halt the declining trend on biodiversity and habitat quality, nature conservation areas have been designated in the Netherlands since the early 1900s. This strategy currently proves to be successful, as the status of the biodiversity and the quality of the habitats have stabilized in these protected areas. However, outside the protected areas the degradation of nature continues as before as can be seen from the shear amount of insects and farmland birds, as well as the diversity. Also the services that nature provides to human society, like carbon sequestration and pollination of food crops, are under pressure. To be able to restore nature in the conservation areas, the negative effects of the surrounding areas through acidification, desiccation and fragmentation, the unregulated surrounding areas need to be managed more sustainably. As a first step in policy development the recent status and changes need to be mapped and understood. For the Dutch province of Gelderland (12% of the area of the Netherlands) the current locations of nature elements outside protected areas have been mapped, as well as hotspots of recent changes in the locations of small nature elements
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]