Living Planet Index

The Living Planet Index (LPI) is an indicator of the state of global biological diversity, based on trends in vertebrate populations of species from around the world.

The LPI provides the general public, scientists and policy-makers with information on trends in the abundance of the world’s vertebrates and offers insights into which habitats or ecosystems have species that are declining most rapidly. This information can be used to define the impact humans are having on the planet and for guiding actions to address biodiversity loss.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is working in partnership with the Institute of Zoology (IoZ), the research division of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), to further develop the project, which began in 1997.

The Living Planet Index was originally developed by WWF in collaboration with UNEP-WCMC, the biodiversity assessment and policy implementation arm of the United Nations Environment Programme. UNEP-WCMC collected data for the index in the first few years of the project.

Results are presented biennially in the WWF Living Planet Report, on the World Wide Web, and in publications such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the UN Global Biodiversity Outlook. National and regional reports are now being produced to focus on relevant issues at a smaller scale. The latest edition of the Living Planet Report was released in September 2014 (LPR 2014- Species and spaces, people and places).[1] The previous version of the report, published in 2012, was launched from space by astronaut André Kuipers in the International Space Station, in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

Between 1970 and 2010 the index fell by 52%. This global trend suggests that natural ecosystems are degrading at a rate unprecedented in human history.


Calculation

The current Living Planet Database (LPD), maintained by ZSL, contains almost 16,000 population trends for more than 3,500 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

The global LPI is calculated using over 10,000 of these population time-series which are gathered from a variety of sources such as journals, online databases and government reports.

A generalized additive modelling framework is used to determine the underlying trend in each population time-series. Average rates of change are calculated and aggregated to the species level.[2][3]

Each species trend is aggregated to produce an index for the terrestrial, marine and freshwater systems. This process uses a weighted average method which places most weight on the largest (most species-rich) groups within a biogeographic realm. This is done to counteract the uneven spatial and taxonomic distribution of data in the LPD. The three system indices are then averaged to produce the global LPI.


Convention on Biological Diversity

In April 2002, at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 188 Nations committed themselves to actions to: “… achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national levels…”

The LPI played a pivotal role in measuring progress towards the CBD's 2010 target.[4][5] It has also been adopted by the CBD as an indicator of progress towards its 2011-2020 targets 5, 6, and 12.[6]

The work by the Indicators and Assessments Unit at ZSL is concerned with ensuring the most rigorous and robust methods are implemented for the measurement of population trends, expanding the coverage of the LPI to more broadly represent biodiversity, and disaggregating the index in meaningful ways (such as assessing the changes in exploited or invasive species).

Building the LPD network

Population data invariably comes from the better monitored regions of the world;[7] however a network of organisations collecting species population data is currently being developed. With the regular addition of high quality data to the LPD the LPI will aim to have greater coverage of species from poorly known taxonomic groups and regions. In addition, ZSL and WWF have recently begun forming partnerships to develop LPIs for invertebrates and plants.

See also

References

  1. ↑ WWF. 2014.Living Planet Report 2014: species and spaces, people and places. [McLellan, R., Iyengar, L., Jeffries, B. and N. Oerlemans (Eds)]. WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
  2. ↑ Collen B., Loh J., Whitmee S., McRae L., Amin R. & Baillie J.E.M. (2009) Monitoring change in vertebrate abundance: the Living Planet Index. Conservation Biology 23: 317-327.
  3. ↑ Loh, J., Green, R.E., Ricketts, T., Lamoreux, J., Jenkins, M., Kapos, V., and Randers, J., 2005. The Living Planet Index: using species population time series to track trends in biodiversity. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 360: 289–295.
  4. ↑ Butchart, S. H. M., Walpole, M. et al. (2010) "Global Biodiversity: Indicators of Recent Declines." Science 328(5982): 1164-1168.
  5. ↑ UNEP (2006) Report on the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity In: CBD, editor. pp. 374.
  6. ↑ https://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/
  7. ↑ Collen, B., Ram, M., Zamin, T. and McRae, L. (2008) The tropical biodiversity data gap: addressing disparity in global monitoring.Tropical Conservation Science Vol.1 (2):75-88. Available online: tropicalconservationscience.org.

External links

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