Global biodiversity indicators

CSIRO’s global indicators enable governments and organisations to plan and track progress towards achieving biodiversity goals and targets

Overview

The modelling and assessment system used to generate these indicators, BILBI (Biogeographic modelling Infrastructure for Large-scale Biodiversity Indicators), combines advances in remote sensing, high-performance computing and macroecological modelling with data from GBIF for over 400,000 plant, vertebrate and invertebrate species to assess biodiversity change at high spatial resolution (~1km) across the entire land surface of the planet.

Three of the indicators generated by the BILBI system are recognised as component indicators for monitoring progress under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF):

The Protected Area Representativeness and Connectedness (PARC) indices measure the extent to which terrestrial protected areas, and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), are ecologically representative, and well-connected. The PARC-representativeness index assesses representation of the full range of environmental and biological diversity present within any given spatial reporting unit at a much finer, and more ecologically meaningful, resolution than indicators of representativeness based on proportional protection of broader units such as ecoregions, biomes or ecosystem types. The PARC-connectedness index provides a rigorous measure of the extent to which protected areas and OECMs are functionally connected to one another and to other areas of intact natural ecosystems in the surrounding landscape. These two indices can also be optionally combined into a composite PARC indicator, offering a uniquely integrative measure of progress in the expansion of protected areas and OECMs.
The Biodiversity Habitat Index (BHI) estimates the level of species diversity expected to be retained within any given spatial reporting unit (e.g. a country, an ecosystem type, or the entire planet) as a function of the area, condition (or integrity) and connectivity of natural ecosystems across that unit. Results for the indicator can be expressed as either: 1) the ‘effective proportion of habitat’ remaining within the unit – adjusting for the effects of the condition and functional connectivity of that habitat, and of spatial variation in the species composition of ecological communities (beta diversity); or 2) the proportion of species expected to persist (i.e. avoid extinction) over the long term, predicted as a simple species-area based function of the effective proportion of habitat remaining.
The Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index (BERI) further estimates the capacity of landscapes to retain species diversity in the face of climate change, as a function of the area, connectivity and integrity of natural ecosystems across those landscapes. The indicator assesses the extent to which any given spatial configuration of natural habitat will promote or hinder climate-induced shifts in biological distributions. It does this by analyzing the functional connectivity of each grid-cell of natural habitat to areas of habitat in the surrounding landscape which are projected to support a similar assemblage of species under climate change to that currently associated with the cell of interest.

Underpinning ecosystem condition data

The current global implementations of the BHI and BERI indicators are underpinned by data on change in ecosystem condition for every 1km terrestrial grid-cell on the planet, derived from a global time series of land-use change. CSIRO generates this dataset by statistically downscaling coarse-resolution land-use data using finer-resolution covariates, including remotely-sensed land cover and abiotic environmental attributes. The land-use downscaling technique originally developed for this purpose has since been extended to employ higher quality land-use training data, and remote-sensing covariates. Applying this downscaling approach across multiple years provides an effective means of translating remotely observed land-cover change into estimated changes in the proportions of 12 land-use classes occurring in each 1km cell. These land-use proportions are then, in turn, translated into an estimate of ecosystem condition, for any given cell in any given year, using coefficients derived from global meta-analyses of land-use impacts on local retention of species diversity undertaken by the Natural History Museum’s PREDICTS Project.

Considerable potential also exists to derive the BHI and BERI from ecosystem condition or integrity datasets of higher quality and/or resolution than the data employed in the current global implementation of these indicators. Existing examples include refinement of the BHI across all forest-supporting countries, application of the BHI to ecosystem accounting in the San Martin region of Peru, implementation of the BERI within the Australian State of New South Wales, and a recently commenced collaboration between the Republic of Korea’s National Institute of Ecology, NatureServe, and CSIRO implementing both the BHI and the BERI using best-available environmental and biological data for South Korea.

Access to indicator results

Global 1km grid-resolution results for CSIRO’s global biodiversity indicators can be downloaded from the CSIRO Data Access Portal and viewed through the UN Biodiversity Lab.

CSIRO has now also developed a simple Biodiversity Indicators Explorer app allowing users to view summarised results for its indicators in chart and map form – globally, by country, and by major biomes within each country.

In addition, summarised results for these indicators can also be viewed and/or downloaded through the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership Dashboard and Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index portal.

Case study: Potential application of the BERI indicator to planning and reporting progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

Initial development of the BERI was funded by the Biodiversity Indicator Partnership’s ‘Mind the Gap’ initiative in 2017, to fill a high-priority gap in assessing achievement of the CBD’s earlier Aichi Targets. Within the Monitoring Framework for the KM-GBF, the BERI is recognized as a component indicator for Target 8 “Minimize the impact of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity and increase its resilience through mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction actions …”. However, due to its highly integrative nature, the BERI offers considerable potential to play a broader role in GBF implementation, by addressing interlinkages between Target 8, the area-based action Targets 1 (spatial planning), 2 (restoration) and 3 (protection), and the ecosystem-focused and species-focused components of Goal A:

In relation to Goal A, the BERI offers a powerful means by which to translate observed changes in ecosystem integrity (e.g. from remote sensing), and associated changes in connectivity, into expected consequences for the capacity of ecosystems to retain species diversity in the face of climate change. This is the underpinning foundation for using the BERI to monitor change in the effectiveness with which the integrity and connectivity of terrestrial ecosystems are expected to “minimize the impact of climate change … on biodiversity” under Target 8, across all countries of the world (here illustrated for Papua New Guinea):

The BERI can also serve as a leading indicator for assessing the contribution that proposed or implemented area-based actions under Targets 1, 2 and 3 are expected to make to enhancing the present capacity of landscapes to retain species diversity in the face of climate change. This will allow actions under these targets to be better linked both to the achievement of Target 8, and to achieving outcomes under Goal A, thereby providing a stronger foundation for strategic prioritisation of such actions by CBD member countries.