Long-term, standardized monitoring programs are key to assessing the state of biodiversity. While such data sets have been successfully used to measure density or abundance and monitor and detect population change in time and space at the national level, little is known as to how these changes are organized across scales and along broad latitudinal gradients. In the LOLA-BMS project, we gathered a team of 15 researchers, including ecologists, butterfly experts, statisticians and modellers to enable fruitful collaborations and develop inovative approaches to better use and leverage information that is contained in these unique data sets. We compiled data from eight butterfly monitoring schemes (BMS) distributed across Europe, North America and Israel to enable more integrative analyses and examine how local dynamics build up in large-scale responses. More specifically, we examined how butterflies responded to climate change and how range-shift and expansion affect the composition and the structure of butterfly communities across Europe. Along this latitudinal gradient, we also tested for signatures that could indicate local adaptation in population's response to variation in temperature and drouth. The combined data sets also enabled us to examines how population trends allign with species traits and how these relationships vary in space. Our experience as working group at the CESAB clearly shows that collaborative efforts combined with rich and extensive data sets offers fantastic opportunities for examining the impact of environmental change on biodiversity at multiple scales and produce crucial knowledge that is timely and highly relevant for stakeholders and decision makers.