BioCondition

Brief description

BioCondition is a vegetation condition assessment framework that provides a measure of the capacity of a terrestrial ecosystem to maintain biodiversity values at a local or property scale. It is a site-based, quantitative and repeatable assessment procedure that provides a numeric score that reflects functional through to dysfunctional vegetation condition states for biodiversity. In BioCondition, we refer to vegetation condition as the relative capacity of a regional ecosystem to support the suite of species expected to occur in its reference state. The reference state refers to the natural variability of the stable land-based vegetation state that is mature and relatively long undisturbed in the contemporary landscape and in ‘Best-on-Offer’ condition. The primary components of the BioCondition framework include: 1) The assessment unit, which is based on regional ecosystems by broad condition states (remnant, high-value regrowth, non-remnant). 2) A suite of vegetation condition attributes that are based on a pressure-state-response conceptual framework and are direct or surrogate measures of species diversity and/or ecological processes. 3) Benchmarks for each of the vegetation attributes for each regional ecosystem; 4) A scoring system that provides a condition metric that is comparable between and within ecosystems over space and time. Biodiversity data recorded in this system is shared with the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)to improve biodiversity research and the ecological data is incorporated into the Queensland Herbarium QBEIS database which is shared with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) to improve ecological modelling and research.

Notes

Includes: point occurrence data