Measuring biodiversity

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Measuring biodiversity

• Dr RJ (Bob) Scholes
• Chair, Global Terrestrial Observing System
• CSIR Environmentek
• PO Box 395, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
• bscholes_at_csir.co.za

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This paper will cover

• Theory of biodiversity observations
• Existing approaches and systems
• Approaches that may satisfy the goals

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Biodiversity 3 aspects x 3 levels
Structural
Landscape patterns
Physiognomy/habitat structure
(Noss 1994)
Population structure
Genetic structure
Genetic process
Genes
Demographic process
Compositional
Interspecific interactions
Species, populations
Functional
Landscape processes/ disturbances/
Communities/ecosystems
Landscape type
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At any level, diversity has at least two
components

• How many different types of things are present
• Elephant, rhino and lion is less diverse than
• Elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo
• How evenly they are represented
• 1000 elephants and 1 lion is less diverse than
• 500 elephants and 500 lions

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Academic ways of measuring biodiversity

• Species level
• Richness Total number of species in an area (?
  diversity)
• Species turnover along a gradient (? diversity)
• Ecosystem level
• Number of different habitats or ecosystems (?
  diversity)
• Genetic level
• Genetic homology
• Cladistic distance

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Policy ways of measuring biodiversity

• Extinction based (IUCN)
• Threatened species (Red Data Books)
• Area based (Millennium goals)
• Area under protection
• Area of a key habitat (eg Forest cover)
• Richness based
• Indicator groups or species eg CI Rapid
  Biodiversity Assessment
• Complementarity based
• Various conservation optimisation tools, eg CPLAN
• Various spatial representations
• Hotspots, last wild places

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Royal Society Report2003

• no sound basis exists for assessing
  performance against these targets.
• The fate of organisms not yet recognised by
  science cannot be measured
• Lack of baselines
• Biodiversity measures must be related to the
  objectives of measurement

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Attributes of a good indicator

• Does it measure what it says it does?
• Sensitive, but not oversensitive
• Scale appropriate in time and space
• Well-understood model
• Reliable data available
• Monitoring systems in place
• Understandable by policymakers
• (NRC 2000)

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Natural Capital IndexRIVM/UNEP-WCMC/GEO-3
NCI ecosystem quality x ecosystem quantity
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Example NCI for The Netherlands
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SA?MA Biodiversity Intactness Index

• Based on impacts on populations, rather than
  extinctions
• Considers a range of impacts
• Protected, sustainably used, unsust used,
  partially transformed, transformed
• Scale independent
• Applicable now, but amenable to incremental
  improvement

Southern Africa Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
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SA?MA Algorithm
B biodiversity intactness index Cijk
populations of i under use k/ popn when
protected Ajk Area of land use k in ecosystem
j Rij Richness of taxon i in ecosystem j i
taxon, from 1 to t j ecosystem, from 1 to m k
land use type, from 1 to n
Needs Land cover, richness, impact matrix
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Worked exampleSouth Africa, biome resolution
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WWF Ecoregion database
867 biodiversity-based regions of the world Based
on best available information Species lists for
birds, mammals, reptiles, plants,amphibia
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Global land cover products

• Many are now available
• DISCover, FAO-FRA, GLC 2000, Modis
• Global coverage, resolution lt 1 km
• 20 m products available for key areas
• Methods and results convergence
• GOFC/GOLD (a GTOS panel)
• Mid 1990s baselines feasible, year 2000 baseline
  in hand
• Reliable expectation of year 2010 repeat

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What GTOS can offerGlobal Terrestrial Observing
System

• Biodiversity is one of the five mandated topics
  covered by GTOS
• Land, freshwater, cryosphere
• Close collaboration with GOOS on coasts
• GOOS covers open ocean
• TEMS database
• biodiversity module
• Biodiversity network methods harmonised
• GOFC/GOLD
• Land cover dynamics, especially forests

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TEMS Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Sites
Who, what, where

• Web directory of 1,600 sites and 55 networks in
  110 countries that carry out long-term
  terrestrial ecosystem monitoring of 110 variables

http//www.fao.org/gtos/tems
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TEMS Biodiversity module
Variables specific to biodiversity

• Colonization of habitat by invasive species
• Habitat conversion
• Habitat fragmentation
• Indicator species
• Pollinator species
• Species Richness
• Threatened Species
• Many of the other 115 variables in TEMS are also
  directly linked to Biodiversity.

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The CBD and WSSD goalsCBD CoP VII/26, WSSD
Implementation Plan

• ..significantly reduce the rate of loss of
  biodiversity by 2010
• This is a double differential problem
• Change in a rate
• Requires at least 3 snapshots in time to solve

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Global strategy for plant conservationCBD CoP
VI/9 April 2002

1. Accessible list of plant species
2. Assess status of all species
3. Understand conservation needs for threatened
   species
4. 10 of each ecological region, 50 of species
   conserved in situ
5. 90 threatened species cons ex situ
6. 30 of production lands managed consistent with
   conservation goals

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UN Millennium Goals

• reverse the loss of environmental resources
• Proposed indicators
• Proportion of land area covered by forest
• Proportion of land area protected for
  biodiversity conservation
• These indicators are measurable, but not
  necessarily sensitive to the goal

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Pragmatic issues

• For the purpose of evaluating progress towards
  the goals, biodiversity measurements
• Dont have to be perfect, just agreed
• Need to be based on activity rather than
  stock measurements (cf UNFCCC)
• Satellite-based land cover measurements, coupled
  with sparse in-situ information in an explicit
  way (a model) could do the job for terrestrial
  systems

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A proposal

• Agree to develop an approach based on
• Land cover/use in 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2100
  GOFC/GOLD WCMC
• Richness within ecosystem units WWF Taxonomy
  initiatives NGOs nations
• An impact matrix (land use x taxa, per biome)
  derived from site data, models and expert
  judgement Diversitas GTOS
• For test by 2005, and retrospective application
  by 2010