Open AccessSubstantial losses in ecoregion intactness highlight urgency of globally coordinated action
Author(s) -
Beyer Hawthorne L.,
Venter Oscar,
Grantham Hedley S.,
Watson James E.M.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
conservation letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.153
H-Index - 79
ISSN - 1755-263X
DOI - 10.1111/conl.12692
Subject(s) - ecoregion , habitat , fragmentation (computing) , environmental resource management , habitat fragmentation , geography , ecosystem , metric (unit) , habitat destruction , ecology , environmental science , biology , business , marketing
Human activities are altering natural areas worldwide. While our ability to map these activities at fine scales is improving, a simplistic binary characterization of habitat and non‐habitat with a focus on change in habitat extent has dominated conservation assessments across different spatial scales. Here, we provide a metric that captures both habitat loss, quality and fragmentation effects which, when combined, we call intactness. We identify nine categories of intactness of the world's terrestrial ecoregions based on changes in intactness across a 16‐year period. We found that highly impacted and degraded categories are predominant (74%) and just 6% of ecoregions are on improving trajectories. It is essential that management of degrading processes be targeted in international agendas in order to ensure that Earth's remaining intact ecosystems are effectively conserved and restored in order to achieve effective conservation outcomes.