Measuring Biodiversity

conservation action –> observation & monitoring –> detection and attribution –> science to policy

number of entities (genotypes, species, or ecosystems), their relative abundance, and the difference in their traits and interactions

detection, prediction, and causal explanation of biodiversity and ecosystem change is central to biodiversity science and policy

by satellites, drones, field work (ecology)

past and guess of the future –> accurate models and cohesive data

public communication, litigation in a contested contexts, restoration, and conservation of biodiversity, and improvement in our fundamental understanding of biodiversity change

IPCC litigation (development projects in the west) restoration and conservation of biodiversity

‘more than 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas’ local trend extrapolated globally rural landscape, systematic decline as national average one variable in biomass and not biodiversity, trends measured with poor controls

minimums set of measurements, complementary to one another, that can capture major dimensions of biodiversity change

biological and policy relevant sensitive to change biological state variables generalize across realms scalable feasible

genetic composition species populations species traits community composition ecosystem structure ecosystem functions

calculate species change at smaller scale ( ~1km) or local scale and project globally = ‘pixel by pixel’ map showcasing richness and abundance

no global biodiversity system ‘Stone Age’ of developing tech and roll-out new systems to eliminate bias in data collection

scale-up easier to motivate conservation action if there is local action human action can affect transformed landscapes

lack long-term, standardized, spatially complete, and readily accessible monitoring information… this significantly hinders our capacity to assess the status and health of Canada’s ecosystems

move ( distribution shift = range shift) colonization / invasion extinction adaptation (change in phenotype/ ecotype) episodic rarity ( change in non consistent manner)

all factors to be considered at once, and focus on. the net outcome of all these differences

rates of climate change, human ecological footprint (affect lakes and forests) e.g. 500 species at risk in the south of Canada and how drivers are changing the species in this area

built on its natural ecosystem ( only observe marketable diversity) look for things where we live, look, biodiversity studies also map roads heavily biased data collection, constrained by accessibility data collection but not in protected areas

1- detection of anthropogenic signal (s) in spatial and temporal biodiversity dynamics of the focal ecological system, and attribution of the cause to one or more drivers 2- attribution of biodiversity change impacts on ecosystem functions and services (NCPs)

temporal variability in biodiversity must be considered to understand what affect human activities are having

stationary ( biased understanding of change) non stationary - step change ( sudden loss or gain) - shift in variance (mean squared variation, frequent measurements) = unstable / new extremes

the process of demonstrating that biodiversity or a process affected by biodiversity has changed in some defined statistical sense without providing a reason for that change

the process of evaluating the relative contributions of multiple causal factors to a change (trend) or event with an assignments of statistical confidence How much is each thing affecting it