Landscape scale biodiversity assessment: the problem of scaling Report of an electronic conference, March 2005 MARBENA E-Conference Organisation: Juliette Young, Allan Watt, Malcolm Collie and Denise Wright Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Hill of Brathens, Glassel Banchory AB31 4BW, UK András Báldi Animal Ecology Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Natural History Museum Ludovika tér 2, Budapest, Hungary, H-1083 Ariel Bergamini and Christoph Scheidegger Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research Zürcherstrasse 111, CH-8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi University of Pisa Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Uomo e dell’Ambiente Via A. Volta 6, I-56126 Pisa, Italy Keith Hiscock Marine Biological Association of the UK Citadel Hill, Plymouth PL1 2PB, UK Sybille van den Hove and Thomas Koetz Institute of Environmental Science and Technology Autonomous University of Barcelona Passeig Pintor Romero, 8, 08197 Valldoreix, Spain Ekko van Ierland Environmental Economics and Natural Resources Social Sciences Group, Wageningen University P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen, The Netherlands András Lányi Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Sociology Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, H-1117 Budapest,.Hungary György Pataki St. Istvan University Pater K. u. 1., H-2103 Godollo, Hungary BioPlatform (EVK2-CT-2001-20009): Isabel Sousa Pinto (Project Coordinator) University of Porto CIIMAR, University of Porto R. dos Bragas, 177 4150-123 Porto, Portugal Martin Sharman and Karin Zaunberger Biodiversity Sector, Natural Resources Management and Servic es, European Commission Directorate General for Research B-1049 Brussels, Belgium This publication should be cited as follows: Young, J., Báldi, A., Benedetti-Cecchi, L., Bergamini, A., Hiscock, K., van den Hove, S., Koetz, T., van Ierland, E., Lányi, A., Pataki, G., Scheidegger, C., Török, K. and Watt, A.D. (Editors). 2005. Landscape scale biodiversity assessment: the problem of scaling. Report of an electronic conference. Institute of Ecology and Botany of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Vacratot, Hungary. Cover picture: Botanical Garden of the Institute of Ecology and Botany, Budapest. Contents Contents........................................................................................................................... 1 Preface............................................................................................................................. 2 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 3 List of contributions ........................................................................................................ 10 Scaling problems in biodiversity assessment..................................................................... 15 Biological scales and conservation................................................................................... 77 Political and economic scales in relation to biodiversity ...................................................120 Integrating ecological and social scales ...........................................................................154 References ....................................................................................................................186 1 Preface Research on biodiversity is essential to help the European Union and EU Member States to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity as well as reach the target of halting the loss of biodiversity in Europe by 2010. The need for co-ordination between researchers, the policy-makers that need research results and the organisations that fund research is reflected in the aims of the BioPlatform network. BioPlatform is a network of scientists and policy makers that work in different fields of biodiversity and aims at improving the effectiveness and relevance of European biodiversity research, fulfilling functions that provide significant components of a European Research Area. BioPlatform supports the existing “European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy” (EPBRS), a forum of scientists and policy makers representing the EU countries, whose aims are to promote discussion of EU biodiversity research strategies and priorities, exchange of information on national biodiversity activities and the dissemination of current best practices and information regarding the scientific understanding of biodiversity conservation. This is a report of the BioPlatform E-conference entitled “Landscape scale biodiversity assessment: the problem of scaling” preceding the EPBRS meeting to be held in Budapest, Hungary from the 31st March to the 4th April 2005. 2 Summary Both organising institutions, the Institute of Ecology and Botany and the Ministry for Environment and Water, have experience of habitat level biodiversity assessment and mapping through the development and operation of the Hungarian Biodiversity Monitoring System. During the organisation of the EPBRS meeting in Hungary, scaling emerged as an important issue to address among both natural and social scientists. Scaling, as a scie ntific problem has not been touched upon so far at EPBRS meetings, so the organisers hope to awaken the interest of the scientific community by selecting this topic as the basis of the EPBRS meeting in Hungary. The aim of this EPBRS meeting is to focus on the ecological research problems raised by the different scales of biodiversity (with an emphasis on landscape scale), and the interaction between policy and social aspects with biodiversity conservation at different scales. In order to reach those aims, the e-conference had four sessions running in parallel, on the following themes: - Session I- Scaling problems in biodiversity assessment, chaired by Ariel Bergamini, Christoph Scheidegger and Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi - Session II- Biological scales and conservation, chaired by András Báldi and Keith Hiscock - Session III- Political and economic scales in relation to biodiversity, chaired by Sybille van den Hove, Thomas Koetz and Ekko van Ierland - Session IV- Integrating ecological and social scales, chaired by György Pataki, András Lányi and Ekko van Ierland. The overall conclusions from those sessions are as follows: Session I- Scaling problems in biodiversity assessment In total, this session had 55 contributions (16 keynotes and 39 other contributions). The main topics of this session were scaling up and indicators. Scaling-up: This is a topic of particular interest and several keynotes and contributions addressed it. Because we can never accomplish a complete assessment of biodiversity of a large area such as a landscape or a region, we will always have to scale -up from samples to the entire area. Approaches include linking remotely sensed data with field investigations, models using the detection probabilities of species in small plots to extrapolate to a larger region, and the development of scaling functions. However, there are some specific problems. For example, there is a lack of rigorous testing of the accuracy of the first 3 approach. For the second approach a major problem seems to be that we can estimate species richness in different habitat types, but we have problems combining these estimates for a landscape estimate because of undetected (unidentified) species. Furthermore, contributors identified the potential of viewing ecosystems as self-organizing, i.e. as emergent systems, which change when crossing an emergence boundary. However, a lot of ecologists are not very familiar with this topic and, thus, for them the potential is not yet very obvious. Indicators: Indicators are still discussed controversially and it seems clear that all indicators have some shortcomings such as scale -dependency of their strength as indicators. Regarding taxonomic scales or hierarchies, the morphospecies concept in particular seems to be controversial as was indicated by several critical contributions. The use of species lists was also questioned, but again, opinions were not uniform. One of the main problems identified with species lists is that all species are regarded as equal, which, of course, they are not. Moreover, they may not be very useful for short time scales; abundance measures were suggested as more suitable for short time scales. Another problem identified is that species lists are very time-consuming and not very cost-effective to produce. The non-congruence of richness patterns of rare and common species, which was emphasized in one keynote, seems to be of particular importance in biodiversity assessment. For example, if we identify drivers of species richness based on all species, these drivers are mainly relevant for the common species. Furthermore, we don’t know anything about how congruence of richness patterns of rare and common species changes with spatial scale. Regarding genetic diversity and indicators we hardly know anything. While there has been a lot of work on relationships between various indicators and species richness, there is hardly any work done on indicators on genetic diversity. Unfortunately the EASAC guide to biodiversity indicators (http://www.easac.com) was published towards the end of the e-conference. This could have been a very good basis for our discussions. There were other topics, which were not rigorously discussed, but are nevertheless important in this discussion: 1. The selection of conservation-relevant areas (in terms of biodiversity) is scale (or grain) dependent. 2. The trade-off between geographical