A general framework and some specific applications are presented for applying DCW and land cover data sets to simple models for assessing biotic integrity (or health) and vulnerability of ecosystems and biodiversity at the regional scale. The growing emphasis by government and international agencies on an environmental policy indicators approach, based on the Pressure-State-Response model, presents both an opportunity and a challenge to evolve ecologically and socially relevant indicators of ecosystem pressures, condition, and impact. We discuss a current multi-disciplinary collaboration that is attempting to scale pressure indicators such as human population density and animal stocking rates, and their associated ecosystem stressors including forest fragmentation and habitat degradation.
A case example is presented based on West African data sets, from which the size distributions and spatial relationships (e.g., contiguity) of habitat patches will be examined for their cumulative capacity to support various indicator species and ecosystem functions (e.g., resistance to soil erosion and transport of critically important elements). These capacities will provide relative measures of ecosystem integrity.
Bruce A. Wilcox
Institute for Sustainable Development
3000 Sand Hill Rd.
Bldg. 3, Suite 125
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Email: bruceisd@igc.apc.org
K. Shawn Smallwood
Institute for Sustainable Development
3000 Sand Hill Rd.
Bldg. 3, Suite 125
Menlo Park, CA 94025