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Quantifying and Mapping Habitat-Based Biodiversity Metrics Within an Ecosystem Services Framework
Citation:
Boykin, K., W. Kepner, D. Bradford, R. Guy, D. Kopp, A. Leimer, E. Samson, F. East, A. Neale, AND K. Gergely. Quantifying and Mapping Habitat-Based Biodiversity Metrics Within an Ecosystem Services Framework. Presented at ACES Conference, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, December 10 - 14, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
The biodiversity metrics in development for the National Atlas for Sustainability also provide an appropriate outlet for the international initiatives and likely meet their call for the development and deployment of consistent scalable indicators.
Description:
Ecosystem services have become a key issue of this century in resource management, conservation planning, human well-being, and environmental decision analysis. Mapping and quantifying ecosystem services have become strategic national interests for integrating ecology with economics to help understand the effects of human policies and actions and their subsequent impacts on both ecosystem function and human welfare. Characteristics of biodiversity are valued by humans, and thus are important to include in any assessment that seeks to identify and quantify the value of ecosystems to humans. Some biodiversity metrics clearly reflect ecosystem services (e.g., abundance and diversity of game species), whereas others reflect indirect and difficult to quantify relationships to services (e.g., relevance of species diversity to ecosystem resilience, cultural value of native species). Wildlife habitat has been modeled at broad spatial scales and can be used to map a number of biodiversity metrics. In this approach, we map metrics reflecting ecosystem services or biodiversity features derived from U.S. Geological Survey Gap Analysis Program data for habitat models of terrestrial vertebrate species. Example metrics include state-designated species-of-greatest-conservation-need, threatened and endangered species, harvestable species (i.e., upland game, waterfowl, furbearers, and big game), total species richness, and specific taxon richness. The project is being conducted at multiple scales in a phased approach, starting with community-based studies, then multi-state regional areas, culminating in a national-level assessment. These metrics, along with other ecosystem services, will be presented in the EPA Atlas of Ecosystem Services under development by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its partners. We present results from the Southwest United States (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah) and the Southeast U.S. (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missi