Applying GLOBIO at Different Geographical Levels

Biodiversity is decreasing at high rates due to a number of human impacts. The GLOBIO3 model has been developed to assess human-induced changes in terrestrial biodiversity at national, regional, and global levels. Recently, GLOBIO-aquatic has been developed for inland aquatic ecosystems. These models are built on simple cause–effect relationships between environmental drivers and biodiversity, based on meta-analyses of literature data. The mean abundance of original species relative to their abundance in undisturbed ecosystems (MSA) is used as the indicator for biodiversity. Changes in drivers are derived from the IMAGE 2.4 model. Drivers considered are land-cover change, land-use intensity, fragmentation, climate change, atmospheric nitrogen deposition, excess of nutrients, infrastructure development, and river flow deviation. GLOBIO addresses (1) the impacts of environmental drivers on MSA and their relative importance; (2) expected trends under various future scenarios; and (3) the likely effects of various policy-response options. The changes in biodiversity can be assessed by the GLOBIO model at different geographical levels. The application depends largely on the availability of future projections of drivers. From the different analyses at the different geographical levels, it can be seen that biodiversity loss, in terms of MSA, will continue, and current policies may only reduce the rate of loss. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-619-0.ch008

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