An understanding of risks to biodiversity is needed for planning action to slow current rates of decline and secure ecosystem services for future human use. Although the IUCN Red List criteria provide an effective assessment protocol for species, a standard global assessment of risks to higher levels of biodiversity is currently limited. In 2008, IUCN initiated development of risk assessment criteria to support a global Red List of ecosystems. We present a new conceptual model for ecosystem risk assessment founded on a synthesis of relevant ecological theories. To support the model, we review key elements of ecosystem definition and introduce the concept of ecosystem collapse, an analogue of species extinction. The model identifies four distributional and functional symptoms of ecosystem risk as a basis for assessment criteria: A) rates of decline in ecosystem distribution; B) restricted distributions with continuing declines or threats; C) rates of environmental (abiotic) degradation; and D) rates of disruption to biotic processes. A fifth criterion, E) quantitative estimates of the risk of ecosystem collapse, enables integrated assessment of multiple processes and provides a conceptual anchor for the other criteria. We present the theoretical rationale for the construction and interpretation of each criterion. The assessment protocol and threat categories mirror those of the IUCN Red List of species. A trial of the protocol on terrestrial, subterranean, freshwater and marine ecosystems from around the world shows that its concepts are workable and its outcomes are robust, that required data are available, and that results are consistent with assessments carried out by local experts and authorities. The new protocol provides a consistent, practical and theoretically grounded framework for establishing a systematic Red List of the world’s ecosystems. This will complement the Red List of species and strengthen global capacity to report on and monitor the status of biodiversity

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climate change velocity is an increasingly used metric to assess the broad-scale climatic exposure and climate change induced risks to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the utility of this metric in conservation planning can be enhanced by determining the velocities of multiple climatic drivers in real protected area (pA) networks on ecologically relevant scales. Here we investigate the velocities of three key bioclimatic variables across a nationwide reserve network, and the consequences of including fine-grained topoclimatic data in velocity assessments. Using 50-m resolution data describing present-day and future topoclimates, we assessed the velocities of growing degree days, the mean January temperature and climatic water balance in the Natura 2000 PA network in Finland. The highvelocity areas for the three climate variables differed drastically, indicating contrasting exposure risks in different PAs. The 50-m resolution climate data revealed more realistic estimates of climate velocities and more overlap between the present-day and future climate spaces in the PAs than the 1-km resolution data. even so, the current temperature conditions were projected to disappear from almost all the studied pAs by the end of this century. thus, in pA networks with only moderate topographic variation, far-reaching climate change induced ecological changes may be inevitable. Measurements of the magnitude and geographic variation of climatic changes across the network of protected areas (PAs) provide relevant information for conservation planning, enabling the targeting of management in the PAs most at risk in the face of climate change 1-6. One approach for assessing the climate-change-based risks is the climate change velocity, a metric which defines the speed and direction of climate shifts over a given area 4. Although the majority of the climate velocity studies have been conducted in terrestrial environments, there is now an increasing amount of climate velocity research also addressing marine environments 4,7,8. Technically, climate velocity is a generic metric which nevertheless provides ecologically relevant information for climate-wise conservation planning 2,4,9. Such information is particularly useful for identifying regions and PAs where climate conditions are changing most rapidly, exposing them to high rates of climate displacement 3. Climate velocity has typically been used to assess the climatic risks for the persistence of species and populations 9 , but in cases where rapid changes in the climate affect ecological engineer and keystone species, profound impacts can be carried over to community structure and ecosystem functions 2. Considering PAs as such, climate velocity assessments can be used to identify PAs which face substantial difficulties in retaining ecological conditions that promote present-day biodiversity. Moreover, climate velocity analyses are important in regions which would need new stepping-stone conservation areas to support species movements to complement the PA network, or con...

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