PV Nature Biodiversity Monitoring: Satellites, Sensors and People in Sync
Plan Vivo's biodiversity standard, PV Nature, asks a lot of a project: species-level data across several taxonomic groups, collected to set protocols, year after year. Satellites can't do it alone, and neither can the occasional field trip. Our 60-second walkthrough shows how CitizenClimate brings satellites, sensors and people together in one system.
The film follows a fictional rainforest project, Kolanga River Forest, covering 4,860 ha in Central Africa, with three communities of paid monitors.
What PV Nature measures
PV Nature launched in 2023 and issues Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificates. Its unit is the percentage change in a multimetric per hectare per year, built from species-level data across groups relevant to the site, such as mammals, birds, bats and woody plants. It covers conservation, restoration or both, and Plan Vivo is clear that certificates are a contribution to nature-positive outcomes, not offsets for damage elsewhere. Plan Vivo also requires at least 60% of certificate revenue to flow back to the local community.
Setting it up
1. Create the project and enrol in PV Nature: ecosystem, certificate type, baseline year and monitoring year.
2. Pick target groups and methods: camera traps for mammals, BirdNET for birds, bat detectors for bats and field plots for trees.
3. Put the devices on the map: 24 camera traps and 12 acoustic recorders, each set to cellular or Bluetooth sync.
4. Invite monitors and pay per verified sync, by mobile money.
5. Add a satellite NDVI baseline across all 4,860 ha, with change detection.
6. Train monitors with a lesson on servicing a camera trap, and open the grievance mechanism.
In the forest
7. Walk to the trap, sync, get paid: Prisca syncs camera trap CT-14 by Bluetooth (412 images) and AI names the species, including forest elephant (IUCN Critically Endangered) and white-bellied pangolin (Endangered). She's paid 2,000 XAF.
8. Birds and bats, by their calls: Armel syncs acoustic recorder AR-05 with 96 hours of audio, giving 46 bird detections through BirdNET and 18 bat passes across three call types.
9. A live sighting and a satellite flag: a cellular trap streams two forest elephants live, while NDVI change detection flags a 2.4 ha drop and sends out a paid ground check.
10. Run the pillar metrics: multimetric change, detections per group and the NDVI trend, with a VVB dashboard and audit bundle.
11. Live on the project website through the API, every time a sync lands.
Why combine four data streams
Each method sees something the others miss. Camera traps catch shy mammals, acoustic recorders pick up birds and bats day and night, field plots measure trees directly, and satellites watch the whole area between visits. Community monitors hold it all together: they service the devices, carry out the field plots and check on the ground what the satellite flags. Paying per verified sync keeps devices serviced on schedule, and the record shows who was paid, when and for what.
From raw detections to pillar metrics
In the film, results from 2024 to 2026 show mammals up 8.4%, woody plants 3.2%, birds 7.1% and bats 4.1%, giving an illustrative multimetric change of +5.7%. Behind them sit 14,580 detections: 1,262 mammal detections of 23 species, 9,418 bird detections of 148 species, 3,900 bat passes and 30 field plots. Under PV Nature, an approved Data Analytic Provider calculates the official pillar metrics and multimetric. CitizenClimate's job is to deliver clean, structured, auditable data and a working view of the metrics, ready for them and for the verifier.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is PV Nature?
PV Nature is Plan Vivo's biodiversity standard, launched in 2023. It issues Plan Vivo Biodiversity Certificates based on the percentage change in a multimetric per hectare per year, calculated from species-level data across several taxonomic groups.
What monitoring does PV Nature require?
Data on several species groups across trophic levels, collected to set quality and sampling protocols using approved tools. Camera traps, acoustic recorders, field plots and smartphones are commonly used.
How does BirdNET help biodiversity monitoring?
BirdNET is an AI model that identifies bird species from their calls. Acoustic recorders capture days of audio, and BirdNET turns it into species detections with confidence scores.
Is CitizenClimate approved by Plan Vivo?
CitizenClimate is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Plan Vivo Foundation. Its data is structured to align with Plan Vivo requirements, and official metrics are calculated by an approved Data Analytic Provider.
Why pay community monitors per sync?
Devices only produce data if they're serviced. Paying per verified sync means traps and recorders are visited on schedule, and the record shows exactly who did the work, which supports Plan Vivo's community benefit requirements. It also turns monitoring into steady, local paid work rather than an occasional favour.