Biodiversity Early Warning System
The Biodiversity Early Warning System is critically important at a time when the conservation of the earth's rich heritage of biological diversity is at a cross-roads: deforestation, slash and burn agriculture, invasive species, climate change, and other environmental trends foreshadow a radically different future for the planet's natural environment and humankind. Individual land- and resource-use decisions, often made in response to poorly conceived government policies or skewed economic subsidies and incentives, are leading to the pervasive development of remote areas, widespread deforestation, catastrophic fires, and an exacerbation of climate impacts such as floods, droughts, and desertification. Biologists report that extinctions are running at 100-1000 times the rate expected from the geological record, and as landscapes become even further fragmented in the coming decades, these rates will almost certainly accelerate.
To meet the challenge of protecting the Earth's critical ecosystems, conservationists must know where, and at what rate and magnitude these ecological systems are changing due to human-induced threats, and the direct impact of these threats on biodiversity. For example, by assessing where habitat loss is most acute within an individual Hotspot, we will know where to concentrate our field efforts to prevent further destruction. By studying the types of landscapes and environmental conditions in which deforestation or fires have previously occurred, we can predict where they are most likely to occur in the future. And by monitoring infrastructure development projects (e.g., road construction, mining and fossil fuel extraction) within ecologically critical areas, we will be able to anticipate the future impacts to individual species and entire biotic assemblages.
As part of the CABS' Biodiversity Early Warning System, the Regional Analysis Program is systematically mapping and monitoring threats at multiple spatial scales, investigating the relationships between threats, and examining their impact on biodiversity at the site level. The archiving and processing of 20 to 30 years of satellite data has made much of this research on temporal trends in landscape ecology possible. The development of an advanced aerial survey capability is also enabling us to acquire land cover data at a scale intermediate to field measurements and satellite observations. Armed with these analyses, scientists from Regional Analysis are participating in a series of predictive modeling initiatives that will enable CI to predict and counteract impending environmental catastrophes before they happen.
Some of the best sources of information on landscape ecological change are derived from multi-institution collaborations involving government, research, and non-governmental institutions. These initiatives focus on specific geographic regions, and include the Land Cover Land Use Change (LCLUC) program sponsored by NASA, the Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Study of the Amazon (LBA), and the Global Observation of Forest Cover (GOFC) network, among others. Regional Analysis is participating in these networks to assist with the acquisition of landscape assessments for the Hotspots, to help the networks identify the types of data and geographic areas that correspond to biodiversity priorities, and to foster partnerships between CI and in-country science networks.
