Research

The Swiss parks research coordination helps parks and other protected areas with their research and cooperation projects in common fields of research. This office is hosted within the Swiss Science Academy, which was commissioned to manage this mission by the Federal Office for the environment (FOEN).

On behalf of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the interdisciplinary ValPar.CH project is investigating the current status of ecological infrastructure and its ecological, economic and social value in the Swiss parks. The ValPar.CH team is focusing on four regional nature parks of national importance as case study areas: Argovia Nature Park, Beverin, Gruyère Pays-d'Enhaut and Pfyn-Finges. The research project is one of three schemes of the pilot project «valorisation of the ecological infrastructure in parks». ValPar.CH

The Swiss parks office runs its own geoinformation centre, which core responsibilities include database maintenance, park support, geographical data management and active know-how transfer. The centre also manages the Parcs Data Centre database, which aims to preserve knowledge and information over the long term.