Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index (BERI) for Australia

Brief description

The CSIRO Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index (BERI) for Australia is a spatial layer representing the estimated capacity of ecosystems to retain biological diversity in the face of ongoing, and uncertain, climate change (Ferrier et al. 2020). The BERI assesses the extent to which any given spatial configuration of natural habitat across a landscape will promote or hinder climate-induced shifts in biological distributions. It does this by analysing the functional connectivity of each grid cell to areas of habitat in the surrounding landscape which are projected to support a similar assemblage of species under climate change to that currently associated with the grid cell. BERI is a Component indicator for Target 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (CBD 2022): “Minimize the Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity and Build Resilience”.\n\nThe analysis to derive the BERI accounts for: (1) current spatial patterns in species assemblage turnover; (2) projected change in species assemblage turnover over space and time associated with one or more climate change scenarios; (3) spatial patterns in ecosystem condition as available habitat for biodiversity; (4) connectivity over space and time, accounting for ecosystem condition and environmental conditions.\n\nThe BERI values for each grid cell in the layer provided contain a value between 0, equating to estimated complete loss of accessible (connected) habitat suitable for native species originally associated with that cell (low resilience), and 1, equating to estimated complete retention of the amount of this accessible habitat (high resilience). BERI values are often in the lower range, due to the combined effects of climate change and degradation of ecosystem condition, with areas of lower ecosystem condition affecting biodiversity through both direct habitat loss and reduced connectivity.\n\nBERI spatial layers are provided for two different taxonomic groups: vascular plants and reptiles (‘BERI_Australia_.tif’).\n\nAlso provided are layers for each taxon (‘SumSimilarity_Australia_.tif’) representing the relative area of compositionally similar habitat when all locations were in a pre-intensification reference state without climate change (i.e. ecosystem condition = 100 %). These layers enable BERI to be aggregated and summarised for any reporting region within Australia, accounting for spatial variation in the composition of species assemblages, using the method described in the associated document (‘BERI_regional_summary_method.docx’), including example code (‘BILBI_regional_summary_function.R’).\n\nLineage: The BERI spatial raster for Australia was generated at 9s grid resolution (0.0025°) using the CSIRO BILBI biodiversity modelling infrastructure. The analytical method used was that described in Ferrier et al. (2020) and Harwood et al. (2022a). The ecosystem condition data used to calculate the BERI were from the Habitat Condition Assessment System (HCAS) v2.1 (Williams et al. 2021). This represents an estimate of the average ecosystem condition across Australia over the period 2001 to 2018, at 9s grid resolution (0.0025°) (Williams et al. 2021; Harwood et al. 2021).\n\nInput data on the spatial patterns in species assemblage turnover were from a generalised dissimilarity model (GDM) of vascular plant community composition, and reptile community composition (Mokany et al. 2018). The GDM prediction layers for each taxon for Australia were derived for the ‘current’ climate centred on 1990 and two alternative climate projections centred on 2050. The two future climate projections were derived from the ACCESS model (RCP 8.5) and the GFDL model (RCP 8.5) from the IPCC AR5. \n\nThe data layers for Australia provide finer spatial resolution and make use of higher-quality input data compared to the global layers for BERI provided by Harwood et al. (2022b).\n\n\nReferences\nCBD (2022) The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Convention on Biological Diversity. https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/e6d3/cd1d/daf663719a03902a9b116c34/cop-15-l-25-en.pdf \n\nFerrier, S., Harwood, T.D., Ware, C., Hoskins, A.J. (2020) A globally applicable indicator of the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to retain biological diversity under climate change: The bioclimatic ecosystem resilience index. Ecological Indicators: 117, 106554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106554 \n\nHarwood, T., Williams, K., Lehmann, E., Ware, C., Lyon, P., Bakar, S., Pinner, L., Schmidt, B., Mokany, K., Van Niel, T., Richards, A., Dickson, F., McVicar, T., Ferrier, S. (2021) 9 arcsecond gridded HCAS 2.1 (2001-2018) base model estimation of habitat condition for terrestrial biodiversity, 18-year trend and 2010-2015 epoch change for continental Australia. v7. CSIRO. Data Collection. https://doi.org/10.25919/nkjf-f088 \n\nHarwood,T., Love, J., Dreilsma, M., Brandon, C., Ferrier, S. (2022a) Staying connected: assessing the capacity of landscapes to retain biodiversity in a changing climate. Landscape Ecology. 37:3123 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01534-5 \n\nHarwood, T., Ware, C., Hoskins, A., Ferrier, S., Bush, A., Golebiewski, M., Hill, S., Ota, N., Perry, J., Purvis, A., Williams, K. (2022b) BERI v2: Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index: 30s global time series. v1. CSIRO. Data Collection. https://doi.org/10.25919/437m-8b91 \n\nMokany, K., Harwood, T., Ware, C., Williams, K., King, D., Ferrier, S., Nolan, M. (2018) Enhancing landscape data: capacity building for GDM analyses to support biodiversity assessment. Canberra, Australia: CSIRO. csiro:EP185445. https://doi.org/10.25919/ehxd-fe85 \n\nWilliams, K., Harwood, T., Lehmann, E., Ware, C., Lyon, P., Bakar, S., Pinner, L., Schmidt, B., Mokany, K., Van Niel, T., Richards, A., Dickson, F., McVicar, T., Ferrier, S. (2021) Habitat Condition Assessment System (HCAS version 2.1). Enhanced method for mapping habitat condition and change across Australia. Canberra, Australia: CSIRO; 2021. csiro:EP2021-1200. https://doi.org/10.25919/n3c6-7w60 \n\n