Indicator framework for measuring quantity and quality of biodiversity—Exemplified in the Nordic countries

Abstract

Access to the published version may require journal subscription. Published with permission from: Elsevier.Standard set statement from the publisher: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Ecological Indicators. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS, 13, 1 (February AbstractIn 2002, world leaders made a commitment through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. At the Conference of the Parties of the CBD in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, the target was renewed for 2020. We have developed a Biodiversity Change Index (BCI) to help measure progress towards this target. The BCI is constructed with a two-dimensional resolution, allowing for a direct evaluation of the relative importance of changes in quantity and quality, respectively, to the overall change in biodiversity. Quantity is measured as the area of a specified habitat type and quality as the abundance of indicator species and other habitat quality parameters, such as the proportion of old trees or dead wood in forests. The BCI enables easy comparison of changes in biodiversity between different habitat types and between different regions and nations. We illustrate the use of BCI by calculating the index for the Nordic countries for two common habitat types, farmland and forest, and one habitat type of similar importance in the northern hemisphere; mires. In the period 1990-2005 declines in biodiversity of similar magnitudes are seen for farmland and mires across the Nordic countries, while for forest, trends vary considerably. Our results show that the BCI framework can be a useful tool to communicate the complex issue of biodiversity change in a simple manner. However, in accordance with other studies of biodiversity change we conclude that existing monitoring data are too scarce to consistently calculate BCI for all habitat types in all Nordic countries. In order to reasonably evaluate changes in biodiversity, further efforts towards monitoring programmes to obtain reliable and quality assured data on biodiversity at acceptable spatial and temporal resolutions are needed. Moreover, common methods to apply and harmonise data from different monitoring schemes should be developed.

Reviewing the strength of evidence of biodiversity indicators for forest ecosystems in Europe

“…The most important limitation in determining biodiversity trends is the general lack of long-term monitoring data (Normander et al, 2012;Collen et al, 2009). Normander et al (2012 concluded that if the purpose is to evaluate the 2020 targets for the EU, further efforts in monitoring programmes to obtain reliable, high quality data on biodiversity at acceptable spatial and temporal resolution are required.…”

How to integrate remotely sensed data and biodiversity for ecosystem assessments at landscape scale

“…Finding a relevant and comprehensive bundle of biodiversity indicators to estimate, for instance, the impact of land use change on ecosystem functioning and on ecosystem services is difficult. Rather than being spatially explicit, available indicators are most often derived from statistics on ongoing monitoring programmes on global, national, and sometimes on regional or municipal scales (for a spectrum from global to subnational indicators, see, for example, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010; European Environment Agency 2010; Auvinen et al 2010;Normander et al 2012;City of Helsinki 2014). Furthermore, the majority of the potential biodiversity indicators are case-specific, meaning that they depend on the focused ecosystem type or taxa, and on the scale of observation.…”

Spatial information in ecosystem service assessment: data applicability in the cascade model context

“…Monitoring changes in the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services is based on indicators (Normander et al, 2012), but, until present, the integration of biodiversity indicators has not been very common at the local level (Tasser, Sternbach, & Tappeiner, 2008). The existing records of environmental observations give a good overview of the global environment (e.g.…”