9-second gridded continental Australia revegetation benefit (cleared natural areas) for Reptiles 1990:2050 CanESM2 RCP 8.5 (CMIP5) (GDM: REP_r3_v2)

Brief description

Benefits of revegetation index for Reptiles as a function of land clearing within the present long term (30 year average) climate (1990 centred) based on Generalised Dissimilarity Modelling (GDM) of compositional turnover.
This metric represents the marginal benefit from a unit increase of vegetation at the site, which is a direct function of the slope of the species area curve at the test state of the site. In practice, revegetation of the whole cell is likely to be impractical due to the availability of cleared land within the cell, and practical limitations such as land ownership and revegetation cost. The metric therefore excludes these factors from the analysis, allowing direct comparison of the relative benefit of a given area of revegetation between cells. The values of the index generated according to the above formula are generally low (since a significant area is required to support additional species) and the index is rescaled by multiplying by 1000 to bring it into an approximate 0-1 range.
This metric was developed along with others for use in an assessment of the efficacy of the protected area system for biodiversity under climate change at continental and global scales, presented at the IUCN World Parks Congress 2014. It is described in the AdaptNRM Guide “Helping Biodiversity Adapt: Supporting climate adaptation planning using a community-level modelling approach”, available online at: www.adaptnrm.org.
Data are provided in two forms:
1. Zipped ESRI float grids: Binary float grids (*.flt) with associated ESRI header files (*.hdr) and projection files (*.prj). After extracting from the zip archive, these files can be imported into most GIS software packages, and can be used as other binary file formats by substituting the appropriate header file.
2. ArcGIS layer package (*.lpk): These packages contain can be unpacked by ArcGIS as a raster with associated legend.
Additionally a short methods summary is provided in the file BiodiversityModellingMethodsSummary.pdf for further information.
Layers in this 9s series use a consistent naming convention:
BIOLOGICAL GROUP _ FROM BASE_ TO SCENARIO_ ANALYSIS
e.g. A_90_CAN85_S or R_90_MIR85_L
where BIOLOGICAL GROUP is A: amphibians, M: mammals, R: reptiles and V: vascular plants
Lineage: Benefits of revegetation index was calculated using the highly parallel bespoke CSIRO Muru software running on a LINUX high-performance-computing cluster, taking GDM model transformed environmental grids as inputs. The index of revegetation was calculated as the marginal gain from revegetation actions at a cleared location as a function of the area of similar ecological environments More detail of the calculations and methods are given in the document “BiodiversityModellingMethodsSummary.pdf” provided with the data download.
GDM Model:
Generalised dissimilarity model of compositional turnover in reptile species for continental Australia at 9 second resolution using ALA data extracted 27 February 2014 (GDM: REP_r3_v2)
Climate data. Models were built and projected using:
a) 9-second gridded climatology for continental Australia 1976-2005: Summary variables with elevation and radiative adjustment
b) 9-second gridded climatology for continental Australia 2036-2065 CanESM2 RCP 8.5 (CMIP5): Summary variables with elevation and radiative adjustment
Natural Areas Layer (intact to degraded land)
Australian Government Department of the Environment (2014) Natural areas of Australia - 100 metre (digital dataset and metadata). Available at http://www.environment.gov.au/metadataexplorer/explorer.jsp and up to date information for Western Australia were provided at 25m Albers projection were reprojected to GDA94, merged and aggregated to a continuous measure of proportion of intact area per grid cell at 9s.