Transcript Biodiversity Health Index Main Streams for Life

Biodiversity Health Index
Main Streams for Life
John MacKinnon
UNDP consultant
June 2012
What is it?
• Biodiversity Health is taken as the suitability of
a site to continue to provide secure conditions
for survival of component species and delivery
of key ecological services, including resilience
to climate and other changes.
• BHI is a not an evaluation. It is a dynamic,
constantly varying index that reflects
biodiversity health, just as a financial index
reflects economic performance.
Why use it ?
• BHI provides a baseline against which targets for
maintaining or achieving a given level of health
can be set
• BHI can be used as a results based indicator of
project achievement and impacts
• BHI can indicate where the project is succeeding
or failing and allow revision of activity efforts
throughout the project
• BHI is complimentary to the Management
Effectiveness scorecard in project M & E.
What does it include ?
There are three main components to the index
• Habitat condition
• Species welfare
• Socio-economic context
A comment on stability
Although biodiversity can flourish under
stable conditions, the BHI score does not
necessarily reflect stability. Many wetland
sites are very dynamic but what we are
interested in is the ability of the biota to adapt
to or even thrive with the changes. This will
become increasingly important as climate and
water flow patterns change.
Components of Habitat Condition
• Maintenance of habitat extent and diversity
• Maintenance of habitat quality (productivity,
water supply, pollution, damage and physical
conditions – oxygen, temperature, turbidity)
• Adequacy of habitat connectivity
• Stability of site (natural disasters)
• Resilience to threats and changes
• Levels of existing or planned threats
Components of species welfare
• Containing and maintaining diversity of
representative species (including important
target species)
• Indicator species show numerical stability or
increases (good breeding levels, low mortality
rates)
• Incidence of hunting, poaching, alien species,
new colonisation
• Sustainability of harvest of commercial species
• Response to disasters (fire, floods, droughts,
pollution)
Elements of socio-economic context
• Pressures on habitat and species from local
communities (degree of dependence on natural
resources, sustainability of off-take, etc.)
• Additional threats or stresses from external
developments (existing or planned)
• Success of alternative livelihoods
• Impacts from tourism or other disturbance
• Levels of respect, support and co-management in
protection, monitoring, research, fire fighting,
etc.
The BHI process
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Forming the monitoring team
Classifying and mapping main habitat types
Identifying main threats to be monitored
Identifying suitable indicator species to be monitored
Undertake baseline measurements
Calculate baseline index
Periodically repeat measurements
Analyze observed changes in relation to established
targets
• Report results and feed into project planning revisions
(Fist 6 steps will have expert assistance, local teams can undertake after that)
Need for simplicity and robustness
• The BHI scorecard is designed for simplicity
and robustness
• Different teams should reach similar scores
• Team members do not require high levels of
litteracy, biological knowledge or statistical
skills!!
Identifying key threats
• Key threats have already been identified for
each project area at the PIF stage. These can
be reviewed at PPG stage.
• Additional threats can be tagged for attention
when local teams are assembled or if
unpredicted changes occur during the project
cycle.
Selection of indicator species
• Conservation target species (n.b. rarely seen
species give little data)
• Commoner species that are sensitive to
habitat quality – amphibia, dragonflies, birds
• Easily identified – large mammals
• Easily quantified (harvest levels of fish, crabs
etc. or plants)
• Alien species of concern
Indicator species selected to indicate different
things
Monitoring habitat extent
• Relatively simple habitat classification,
mapped and measured from satellite or aerial
imagery with some ground truthing
• Resampled at minimum yearly intervals
(maybe in 2 different seasons)
• Routine ground monitoring can record
condition details (see model report form)
Example habitat classification
Example of simple survey form
BHI Reporting Form
Reducing variance
• Comparisons of counts of species or habitat
extent or condition should be made in similar
conditions of season and climate, location and
methodology to allow for fairer comparison of
trends.
• Most of the species and habitat data required
for BHI can be incorporated into routine
monitoring programme of the wetland sites
concerned.
Users Guide
to be developed by consultant
• Provides notes for each question to be
completed
• Suggests methodology to be used for each
score including some examples
• Provides standard inventory or monitoring
techniques
• Suggests standard parametric and nonparametric tests for testing significance of
observed changes
Training workshop
• It is suggested that the consultant hold a
training workshop in one of the project sites
and staff from each other site can participate
to undertake one demo baseline survey
Thank You ! 谢谢 !