Description
The Terrestrial Ecoregions dataset offers a comprehensive overview of terrestrial ecosystems and is a valuable resource for biodiversity conservation planning, providing insights based on natural geographical and ecological boundaries rather than political ones. Utilizing recent biogeographical data, this dataset can aid in modern conservation efforts. It includes details on habitat status, with classifications such as "Half Protected," "Nature Could Reach Half," "Nature Could Recover," and "Nature Imperiled," to guide strategic conservation actions.
Technical Description
Ecoregions represent distinct assemblages of biodiversity-all taxa, not just vegetation-whose boundaries include the space required to sustain ecological processes. Ecoregions provide a useful basemap for conservation planning in particular because they draw on natural, rather than political, boundaries, define distinct biogeographic assemblages and ecological habitats within biomes, and assist in representation of Earth's biodiversity.
The 846 terrestrial ecoregions included in the data are grouped into 14 biomes and 8 realms. Six of these biomes are forest biomes and the remaining eight are non-forest biomes. For the forest biomes, the geographic boundaries of theecoregions (Dinerstein et al., 2017) and protected areas (UNEP-WCMC 2016) were intersected with theGlobal Forest Change data (Hansen et al. 2013) for the years 2000 to 2015, to calculate percent of habitat in protected areas and percent of remaining habitat outside protected areas. Likewise, the boundaries of the non-forest ecoregions and protected areas (UNEP-WCMC 2016) were intersected with Anthropogenic Biomes data (Anthromes v2) for the year 2000 (Ellis et al., 2010) to identify remaining habitats inside and outside the protected areas. Each ecoregion has a unique ID, area (sq. degrees), and NNH (Nature Needs Half) categories 1-4. NNH categories are based on percent of habitat in protected areas and percent of remaining habitat outside protected areas.
- Half Protected: More than 50% of the total ecoregion area is already protected.
- Nature Could Reach Half: Less than 50% of the total ecoregion area is protected but the amount of remaining unprotected natural habitat could bring protection to over 50% if new conservation areas are added to the system.
- Nature Could Recover: The amount of protected and unprotected natural habitat remaining is less than 50% but more than 20%. Ecoregions in this category would require restoration to reach Half Protected.
- Nature Imperiled: The amount of protected and unprotected natural habitat remaining is less than or equal to 20%. Achieving half protected is not possible in the short term and efforts should focus on conserving remaining, native habitat fragments.
- The updated Ecoregions 2017 is the most-up-to-date (as of February 2018) dataset on remaining habitat in each terrestrial ecoregion. It was released to chart progress towards achieving the visionary goal of Nature Needs Half, to protect half of all the land on Earth to save a living terrestrial biosphere.
The updated Ecoregions 2017 is the most-up-to-date (as of February 2018) dataset on remaining habitat in each terrestrial ecoregion. It was released to chart progress towards achieving the visionary goal of Nature Needs Half, to protect half of all the land on Earth to save a living terrestrial biosphere.