Modeling drivers of biodiversity change emphasizes the need for multivariate assessments and rescaled targeting for management

Abstract

The current policy and goals aimed to conserve biodiversity and manage biodiversity change are often formulated at the global scale. At smaller scales however, biodiversity change is more nuanced leading to a plethora of trends in different metrics of alpha diversity and temporal turnover. Therefore, largescale policy targets do not translate easily into local to regional management decisions for biodiversity. Using long-term monitoring data from the Wadden Sea (Southern North Sea), joining structural equation models and general dissimilarity models enabled a better overview of the drivers of biodiversity change. Few commonalities emerged as birds, fish, macroinvertebrates, and phytoplankton differed in their response to certain drivers of change. These differences were additionally dependent upon the biodiversity aspect in question and which environmental data were recorded in each monitoring program. No single biodiversity metric or model sufficed to capture all ongoing change, which requires an explicitly multivariate approaches to biodiversity assessment in local ecosystem management.

Enhancing ecological complexity in soft‐bottom coastal ecosystems: the impact of introducing hard substrates

“…We evaluated ecological complexity by comparing taxonomic diversity, community composition, and food web indicators. Incorporating these metrics in the monitoring of ecosystem restoration, helps to anticipate the impact on both biodiversity and functioning of the ecosystem (Pereira et al 2013; Dajka et al 2022). Assessing functionality such as species composition or food webs will give more insight in the ecosystem resilience than metrics like species richness (Bowker et al 2021; Nauta et al 2023).…”