Session: Biodiversity Scenario

This is a session of the GEOSS Architecture Workshop

The Scenario provided below was discussed in this session. (If there were any presentations send them to George Percivall)

Results of the session are in this document.

Biodiversity scenario - Draft

1. Summary

Protected Areas (PAs) and Protected Area Systems are designed to protected natural and cultural resources, to maintain biodiversity (ecosystems, species and genes) and ecosystem services. This scenario will support protected area system designers, and protected area managers to understand the representativeness of the system or PA, and to quantify its status, trends and threats.
Identify the specific decisions to be made.
1. Determine if the PA boundary is valid (correctly delineated) and update the boundary as necessary.
2. Determine if the national, regional, continental and global protected areas system is adequate for capturing the representatives of ecosystems, species and genes, especially for endemic, keystone and threatened and endangered species. This is, in effect, a protected areas gap analysis.
3. Determine the effectiveness of protected area systems and individual protected areas.
4. Determine the System and PA effectiveness related to climate and land use change.
Provide references for additional information.
IP3 Biodiversity and Climate Change Demonstration project
European Commission Joint Research Centre project: Evaluating Protected Areas in Africa.

2. Context and pre-conditions

Identify the actors in the scenario. Actors are any persons involved in the scenario.

• Protected Area managers
• National park agencies
• International protected area institutions (UNESCO, UNEP-WCMC, The Nature Conservancy, IABIN, Ramsar)

Specific information assumed to be available before the scenario begins.

• Time series climate data
• Time series phenology data
• Multidate land cover data
• Transportation data
• Protected areas data (WDPA and other)
• Population data
• Species data (IUCN Red List, GBIF)

The scenario would couple the IP3 species modeling activity with the JRC Africa Protected Areas analysis, allowing users to conduct JRC-like analyses for their region, nation or specific protected area. The scenario thus builds upon previous investment, promotes continuity of analysis, provides modeling capability and expands geographic scope and usership. Components are:
1) A species modeling package whereby one could assimilate geospatial data, overlay with species presence/ absence and or abundance data, and choose from a set of models to predict distribution.
2) Take the JRC Protected Areas web site http://www-tem.jrc.it/PA/intro.html, and develop a tool to perform the same analysis for any of the 110,000 protected areas.
3) A generic Exploratory Data Analysis Tool
Functionality:
1. Assemble and / or link to geospatial data
2. A stock set of analytical and reporting units: country, watershed, ecosystem protected area boundaries
3. Flexible analytical and reporting units

3. Scenario Events

The scenario is elaborated in the table: as a set of steps that result in the creation of decision support products developed in collaboration by the actors.