Don Faber-Langendoen

Scientific Foundations for an IUCN Red List of Ecosystems

An understanding of risks to biodiversity is needed for planning action to slow current rates of decline and secure ecosystem services for future human use. Although the IUCN Red List criteria provide an effective assessment protocol for species, a standard global assessment of risks to higher levels of biodiversity is currently limited. In 2008, IUCN initiated development of risk assessment criteria to support a global Red List of ecosystems. We present a new conceptual model for ecosystem risk assessment founded on a synthesis of relevant ecological theories. To support the model, we review key elements of ecosystem definition and introduce the concept of ecosystem collapse, an analogue of species extinction. The model identifies four distributional and functional symptoms of ecosystem risk as a basis for assessment criteria: A) rates of decline in ecosystem distribution; B) restricted distributions with continuing declines or threats; C) rates of environmental (abiotic) degradation; and D) rates of disruption to biotic processes. A fifth criterion, E) quantitative estimates of the risk of ecosystem collapse, enables integrated assessment of multiple processes and provides a conceptual anchor for the other criteria. We present the theoretical rationale for the construction and interpretation of each criterion. The assessment protocol and threat categories mirror those of the IUCN Red List of species. A trial of the protocol on terrestrial, subterranean, freshwater and marine ecosystems from around the world shows that its concepts are workable and its outcomes are robust, that required data are available, and that results are consistent with assessments carried out by local experts and authorities. The new protocol provides a consistent, practical and theoretically grounded framework for establishing a systematic Red List of the world’s ecosystems. This will complement the Red List of species and strengthen global capacity to report on and monitor the status of biodiversity

Standards for associations and alliances of the U.S. National Vegetation Classification

This article provides guidelines for the description, documentation, and review of proposals for new or revised plant associations and alliances to be recognized as units of vegetation within the U.S. National Vegetation Classification (NVC). By setting forth standards for field records, analysis, description, peer review, and archiving, the Ecological Society of Americas Vegetation Classification Panel, in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee, NatureServe, and others, seeks to advance our common understanding of vegetation and improve our capability to sustain and restore natural systems. We provide definitions for the two floristic levels of the NVC hierarchy: associations and alliances. This is followed by a description of standards for field plot records and the identification and classification of vegetation types. Procedures for review and evaluation of proposed additions and revisions of types are provided, as is a structure for data archiving and dissemination. These proc...

Monitoring and evaluating the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems

“Ecological integrity” provides a useful framework for ecologically based monitoring and can provide valuable information for assessing ecosystem condition and management effectiveness. Building on the related concepts of biological integrity and ecological health, ecological integrity is a measure of the composition, structure, and function of an ecosystem in relation to the system’s natural or historical range of variation, as well as perturbations caused by natural or anthropogenic agents of change. We have developed a protocol to evaluate the ecological integrity of temperate zone, forested ecosystems, based on long-term monitoring data. To do so, we identified metrics of status and trend in structure, composition, and function of forests impacted by multiple agents of change. We used data, models, and the scientific literature to interpret and report integrity using “stoplight” symbology, ie “Good” (green), “Caution” (yellow), or “Significant Concern” (red). Preliminary data indicate that forested ecosystems in Acadia National Park have retained ecological integrity across a variety of metrics, but that some aspects of soil chemistry and stand structure indicate potential problems. This protocol was developed for the National Park Service Vital Signs Monitoring Program and holds promise for application in the temperate zone, forested ecosystems of eastern North America.

EcoVeg: a new approach to vegetation description and classification

A vegetation classification approach is needed that can describe the diversity of terrestrial ecosystems and their transformations over large time frames, span the full range of spatial and geographic scales across the globe, and provide knowledge of reference conditions and current states of ecosystems required to make decisions about conservation and resource management. We summarize the scientific basis for EcoVeg, a physiognomic-floristic-ecological classification approach that applies to existing vegetation, both cultural (planted and dominated by human processes) and natural (spontaneously formed and dominated by nonhuman ecological processes). The classification is based on a set of vegetation criteria, including physiognomy (growth forms, structure) and floristics (compositional similarity and characteristic species combinations), in conjunction with ecological characteristics, including site factors, disturbance, bioclimate, and biogeography. For natural vegetation, the rationale for the upper le...

Contours of the Revised U.S. National Vegetation Classification Standard

The U.S. National Vegetation Classification (USNVC) has recently been completely revised. The USNVC is based on a partnership between nongovernmental organizations, the Ecological Society of America’s Vegetation Panel and NatureServe, and federal partners, through the auspices of the Federal Geographic Data Committee Vegetation Subcommittee. Peet (2008) summarized two of the critical changes; the revised standard (1) provides new standards for the lower levels of the classification, the alliance and association, (2) implements a dynamic approach to maintaining the classification, such that it can be continually updated through an agreed-upon set of peer review procedures and data management tools. A third change is equally sweeping: a restructuring of the overall hierarchy. The revised hierarchy provides a more compelling and ecologically based structure for the entire classification, and is more likely to engage the majority of ecologists who describe patterns of vegetation at broader scales than the association or alliance. The association and alliance remain as critical foundations for detailed vegetation description.

How a national vegetation classification can help ecological research and management

The elegance of classification lies in its ability to compile and systematize various terminological conventions and masses of information that are unattainable during typical research projects. Imagine a discipline without standards for collection, analysis, and interpretation; unfortunately, that describes much of 20th-century vegetation ecology.

Getting the Message Across: Using Ecological Integrity to Communicate with Resource Managers

This chapter describes and illustrates how concepts of ecological integrity, thresholds, and reference conditions can be integrated into a research and monitoring framework for natural resource management. Ecological integrity has been defined as a measure of the composition, structure, and function of an ecosystem in relation to the system’s natural or historical range of variation, as well as perturbations caused by natural or anthropogenic agents of change. Using ecological integrity to communicate with managers requires five steps, often implemented iteratively: (1) document the scale of the project and the current conceptual understanding and reference conditions of the ecosystem, (2) select appropriate metrics representing integrity, (3) define externally verified assessment points (metric values that signify an ecological change or need for management action) for the metrics, (4) collect data and calculate metric scores, and (5) summarize the status of the ecosystem using a variety of reporting methods. While we present the steps linearly for conceptual clarity, actual implementation of this approach may require addressing the steps in a different order or revisiting steps (such as metric selection) multiple times as data are collected. Knowledge of relevant ecological thresholds is important when metrics are selected, because thresholds identify where small changes in an environmental driver produce large responses in the ecosystem. Metrics with thresholds at or just beyond the limits of a system’s range of natural variability can be excellent, since moving beyond the normal range produces a marked change in their values. Alternatively, metrics with thresholds within but near the edge of the range of natural variability can serve as harbingers of potential change. Identifying thresholds also contributes to decisions about selection of assessment points. In particular, if there is a significant resistance to perturbation in an ecosystem, with threshold behavior not occurring until well beyond the historical range of variation, this may provide a scientific basis for shifting an ecological assessment point beyond the historical range. We present two case studies using ongoing monitoring by the US National Park Service Vital Signs program that illustrate the use of an ecological integrity approach to communicate ecosystem status to resource managers. The Wetland Ecological Integrity in Rocky Mountain National Park case study uses an analytical approach that specifically incorporates threshold detection into the process of establishing assessment points. The Forest Ecological Integrity of Northeastern National Parks case study describes a method for reporting ecological integrity to resource managers and other decision makers. We believe our approach has the potential for wide applicability for natural resource management.

Ranking Forest Rarity: No Need to Reinvent that Wheel!

In the article by John L. Innes and Kenneth B. H. Er (“Questionable Utility of the Frontier Forest Concept,” BioScience 52: 1095–1109), the authors conclude by proposing that “the existing biodiversity element ranking system and indicators used by the Network of Natural Heritage Programs and Conservation Data Centers to identify and prioritize the conservation of endangered species in the United States, Canada, and Latin America be adapted and developed for use with forest ecosystems.” But that wheel already exists! NatureServe and its network of natural heritage member programs have been assessing the status of both species and ecological community types for over 15 years using the global ranking system (G1 through G5) that Innes and Er highlight in their article (see table 4). Because determining forest status first requires agreement on the ecological units to be assessed, NatureServe has been instrumental in the development of a vegetation classification standard, the US component (Grossman et al. 1998) of which is formally recognized as a US federal standard (FGDC 1997). Efforts to develop a comparable classification system for Canada are currently under way in collaboration with the Canadian Forest Service, Parks Canada, and provincial partners. Currently recognized vegetation units (including forest and woodland types) and their conservation status ranks can be found on the NatureServe Explorer Web site (www. natureserve.org/explorer). These status assessments have proven enormously useful to private organizations and government agencies in setting land conservation and management goals, and recently have been adopted for use in forest certification by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. We would caution, however, that such a ranking system on its own is insufficient to define conservation priorities for forests. These ranks and the biological data on which they are based represent an excellent starting point from which to incorporate a suite of criteria, including ecological, landscape, and socioeconomic factors, that together help to identify conservation priorities.