TY - JOUR
T1 - Finding the essential
T2 - Improving conservation monitoring across scales
AU - Guerra, C.A.
AU - Pendleton, L.
AU - Drakou, E.G.
AU - Proença, V.
AU - Appeltans, W.
AU - Domingos, T.
AU - Geller, G.
AU - Giamberini, S.
AU - Ziemba, A.
AU - More Authors, null
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - To account for progress towards conservation targets, monitoring systems should capture not only information on biodiversity but also knowledge on the dynamics of ecological processes and the related effects on human well-being. Protected areas represent complex social-ecological systems with strong human-nature interactions. They are able to provide relevant information about how global and local scale drivers (e.g., climate change, land use change) impact biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here we develop a framework that uses an ecosystem-focused approach to support managers in identifying essential variables in an integrated and scalable approach. We advocate that this approach can complement current essential variable developments, by allowing conservation managers to draw on system-level knowledge and theory of biodiversity and ecosystems to identify locally important variables that meet the local or sub-global needs for conservation data. This requires the development of system narratives and causal diagrams that pinpoints the social-ecological variables that represent the state and drivers of the different components, and their relationships. We describe a scalable framework that builds on system based narratives to describe all system components, the models used to represent them and the data needed. Considering the global distribution of protected areas, with an investment in standards, transparency, and on active data mobilisation strategies for essential variables, these have the potential to be the backbone of global biodiversity monitoring, benefiting countries, biodiversity observation networks and the global biodiversity community.
AB - To account for progress towards conservation targets, monitoring systems should capture not only information on biodiversity but also knowledge on the dynamics of ecological processes and the related effects on human well-being. Protected areas represent complex social-ecological systems with strong human-nature interactions. They are able to provide relevant information about how global and local scale drivers (e.g., climate change, land use change) impact biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here we develop a framework that uses an ecosystem-focused approach to support managers in identifying essential variables in an integrated and scalable approach. We advocate that this approach can complement current essential variable developments, by allowing conservation managers to draw on system-level knowledge and theory of biodiversity and ecosystems to identify locally important variables that meet the local or sub-global needs for conservation data. This requires the development of system narratives and causal diagrams that pinpoints the social-ecological variables that represent the state and drivers of the different components, and their relationships. We describe a scalable framework that builds on system based narratives to describe all system components, the models used to represent them and the data needed. Considering the global distribution of protected areas, with an investment in standards, transparency, and on active data mobilisation strategies for essential variables, these have the potential to be the backbone of global biodiversity monitoring, benefiting countries, biodiversity observation networks and the global biodiversity community.
KW - Biodiversity
KW - Ecosystem services
KW - Essential variables
KW - Global monitoring
KW - Systems approach
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85065882442&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00601
DO - 10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00601
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85065882442
SN - 2351-9894
VL - 18
JO - Global Ecology and Conservation
JF - Global Ecology and Conservation
M1 - e00601
ER -