0000000001327131
AUTHOR
David Keith
Using the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems to develop biodiversity indicators
World leaders have committed to the 2020 goal under the Convention on Biological Diversity to improve the status of biodiversity. A suite of biodiversity indicators is currently used to monitor progress towards achieving these targets. Several indicators exist for measuring loss of species diversity and abundance, yet comprehensive indicators measuring change across ecosystems globally are lacking. We fill this gap by developing biodiversity indicators for ecosystems based on the data from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Ecosystems (RLE), the global standard for assessing the risks to ecosystems. Our indicators quantify spatial and temporal changes in ri…
Challenge to define and quantify ecosystem collapse debt
Degradation and loss of ecosystems are of great global concern. It is likely that decline of ecosystems will continue and a debt of ecosystem loss exists, comprising of 1) direct and expectedly continued forcing by detrimental anthropogenic actions and 2) of indirect ongoing gradual change of defining characters set in motion by an initial perturbation. Both direct destructive actions and indirect gradual changes contribute to collapse, i.e. loss of defining characters of certain type of ecosystem. Classification and typology are central to any assessment of risk of ecosystem collapse. Following indirect gradual change, an ecosystem does not vanish, but it may lose its characters and fall b…