An introduction to the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the DOPA Explorer (Beta) Grégoire Dubois, Michael Schulz, Jon Skøien, Andrew Cottam, William Temperley, Marco Clerici, Evangelia Drakou, Jurriaan van’t Klooster, Bart Verbeeck, Ilaria Palumbo, Pascal Derycke, Jean- François Pekel, Javier Martínez-López, Stephen Peedell, Philippe Mayaux 2013 Report EUR 26207 EN European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability Contact information Grégoire Dubois Address: Joint Research Centre, Via Enrico Fermi 2749, TP 440, 21027 Ispra (VA), Italy E-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +39 (0)332 786360 Fax: +39 (0)332 789960 http://dopa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ This publication is a Reference Report by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Legal Notice Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of this publication. 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Wilson, 1998, Consilience TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 5 Funding ................................................................................................................................................... 5 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 7 1.1. The African Protected Areas Assessment Tool (APAAT) legacy .............................................. 7 1.2. From the APAAT to DOPA, evolving from web pages to web services ................................... 8 1.3. Contributions from Critical Biodiversity Data and Models Infrastructures ............................ 9 1.3.1. The UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) ............................. 10 1.3.2. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ............................................... 10 1.3.3. BirdLife International .................................................................................................... 10 1.3.4. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Secretariat ................................... 10 1.3.5. The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission ............................................. 10 1.4. Open Data and Model services supporting DOPA ................................................................ 11 1.4.1. eSpecies for indicators on species richness and diversity ............................................ 12 1.4.2. Ecosystem services ........................................................................................................ 12 1.4.3. eHabitat for habitat and ecological niche modelling .................................................... 12 1.4.4. eStation for the monitoring of terrestrial ecosystems ................................................. 12 1.4.5. eMarine for the monitoring of marine ecosystems ...................................................... 12 1.4.6. Land cover change and threats to protected areas ...................................................... 13 1.4.7. Protected areas governance and management effectiveness ..................................... 13 2. The DOPA Explorer ........................................................................................................................ 15 2.1. End Users .............................................................................................................................. 16 2.2. DOPA Explorer Beta .............................................................................................................. 18 3. Using the graphical user interface of DOPA Explorer Beta in 6 steps........................................... 19 Step 1: Accessing DOPA Explorer and language selection ................................................................ 19 Step 2: Selecting the area of interest ................................................................................................ 20 Step 3: Summary statistics from the right navigation panel............................................................. 21 Step 4: Selecting a protected area .................................................................................................... 22 Step 5: Thematic information on protected areas ........................................................................... 24 Step 6: Summary information from the left navigation panel .......................................................... 25 4. Indicators and data sources .......................................................................................................... 27 4.1. Summary information: stratification by country and ecoregion .......................................... 27 4.2. Protected areas and regional coverage ................................................................................ 28 4.2.1. Country statistics ........................................................................................................... 28 4.2.2. Ecoregion statistics ....................................................................................................... 29 4.3. Species data and Species Irreplaceability (SI) Indicator ........................................................ 30 4.3.1. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (RLTS) .......................................................... 30 4.3.2. Species occurrences ...................................................................................................... 31 1 4.3.3. Displaying species lists and composition in DOPA Explorer ......................................... 31 4.3.4. Limitations of species lists............................................................................................. 34 4.3.5. Species Irreplaceability (SI) Indicator ............................................................................ 35 4.4. Habitat Replaceability Index and land cover types (HRI) ...................................................... 38 4.4.1. Assessing uniqueness and connectivity of ecosystems with the HRI ........................... 38 4.4.2. Extracting land cover types of the protected area ....................................................... 42 4.5. Climate information .............................................................................................................. 42 4.6. Ecosystem Services ............................................................................................................... 44 4.6.1. Comparison of Terrestrial Carbon Maps ....................................................................... 44 4.7. Pressure indicators ................................................................................................................ 45 4.7.1. Population Pressure Index (PP) ..................................................................................... 47 4.7.2. Agriculture Pressure Index (AP) .................................................................................... 47 4.8. Fire Ecology ........................................................................................................................... 48 4.9. Phenology ............................................................................................................................. 49 4.9.1. Vegetation ..................................................................................................................... 49 4.9.2. Rainfall .......................................................................................................................... 50 5. Accessing external data with DOPA Explorer................................................................................ 51 5.1. Using selected Web Map Services (WMS) ................................................................................. 51 5.2. Using external Web Map Services (WMS) ................................................................................. 52 6. Current status, known issues and next steps................................................................................ 55 7. Help and Feedback ........................................................................................................................ 57 7.1. DOPA Web site ...................................................................................................................... 57 7.2.