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Abstract Governments have committed to global targets to slow biodiversity loss and sustain ecosystem services. Biodiversity state indicators that measure progress toward these targets mostly focus on species, while indicators synthesizing ecosystem change are largely lacking. We fill this gap with three indices quantifying past and projected changes in ecosystems using data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Ecosystems. Our indices quantify changes in risk of ecosystem collapse, ecosystem area and ecological processes, and capture variation in underlying patterns among ecosystems. We apply the indices to three case studies of regional and national assessments (American/Caribbean forests, terrestrial ecosystems of Colombia, and terrestrial ecosystems of South Africa) to illustrate the indices’ complementarity and versatility in revealing patterns of interest for users across sectors. Our indices have the potential to fill the recognized need for ecosystem indicators to inform conservation targets, guide policy, and prioritize management actions.

Abstract In 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature adopted the Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) criteria as the global standard for assessing risks to terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems. Five years on, it is timely to ask what impact this new initiative has had on ecosystem management and conservation. In this policy perspective, we use an impact evaluation framework to distinguish the outputs, outcomes, and impacts of the RLE since its inception. To date, 2,821 ecosystems in 100 countries have been assessed following the RLE protocol. Systematic assessments are complete or underway in 21 countries and two continental regions (the Americas and Europe). Countries with established ecosystem policy infrastructure have already used the RLE to inform legislation, land‐use planning, protected area management, monitoring and reporting, and ecosystem management. Impacts are still emerging due to varying pace and commitment to implementation across different countries. In the future, RLE indices based on systematic assessments have high potential to inform global biodiversity reporting. Expanding the coverage of RLE assessments, building capacity and political will to undertake them, and establishing stronger policy instruments to manage red‐listed ecosystems will be key to maximizing conservation impacts over the coming decades.

BACKGROUND: The typical mandate in conservation planning is to identify areas that represent biodiversity targets within the smallest possible area of land or sea, despite the fact that area may be a poor surrogate for the cost of many conservation actions. It is also common for priorities for conservation investment to be identified without regard to the particular conservation action that will be implemented. This demonstrates inadequate problem specification and may lead to inefficiency: the cost of alternative conservation actions can differ throughout a landscape, and may result in dissimilar conservation priorities. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We investigate the importance of formulating conservation planning problems with objectives and cost data that relate to specific conservation actions. We identify priority areas in Australia for two alternative conservation actions: land acquisition and stewardship. Our analyses show that using the cost surrogate that most closely reflects the planned conservation action can cut the cost of achieving our biodiversity goals by half. We highlight spatial differences in relative priorities for land acquisition and stewardship in Australia, and provide a simple approach for determining which action should be undertaken where. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our study shows that a poorly posed conservation problem that fails to pre-specify the planned conservation action and incorporate cost a priori can lead to expensive mistakes. We can be more efficient in achieving conservation goals by clearly specifying our conservation objective and parameterising the problem with economic data that reflects this objective.

Mining is a driver for biodiversity loss worldwide. However, studies of its effects on wildlife are scarce, and few involve activities and environmental management carried out by mining companies. We evaluated the effect of mining activity at multiscale landscape approach on the diversity of dung beetles and bats in the largest open-pit mine in Colombia, located in the tropical dry forest (TDF), one of the most threatened ecosystems due to human activities. The landscape scale effect assessment was carried out with a multiscale analysis at 0.2, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 km of radius around sampling points in 2005–2006, 2009–2010, 2012–2013, and 2016–2017. The vegetation cover was measure through remote sensing and fieldwork for the four periods of each scale. Once predictor variables (vegetation cover and mining) were identified at a landscape scale for each buffer. Generalized linear models were run to know the scale of the effect, and to measure the effects of the vegetation transformation by mining activity on diversity (0D, 1D) and abundance. The scale of the effect for dung beetles, and bats corresponded mostly to 0.2 km. Diversity metrics showed positive relationships with the percentage of natural cover but negative with the percentage of non-natural cover. Dung beetles had higher resilience to mining activities than bats. The implementation of environmental management tools such as maintaining natural areas and rehabilitation of disturbed areas is necessary, especially to mitigate the impacts of open-pit coal mining on different groups of fauna in critically endangered ecosystems such as TDF.

IntroductionHuman activities represent a growing threat to biodiversity, increasing species extinction and leading ecosystems to collapse. The knowledge of the spatial distribution of threats to ecosystems is fundamental to understanding their risk of collapse as defined by the Red List of Ecosystems, an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) global standard to guide conservation and management actions. Colombia is a megadiverse country; almost half of its territory is marine, and its ecosystems are subject to anthropogenic and climatic threats.MethodologyThis study provides a quantitative map assessment for a set of relevant anthropic and climatic threats and impacts on the marine and coastal areas of Colombia, intending to perform the threat description component of the Red List assessment protocol. A cumulative impact assessment was applied to analyze the threat levels (TLs) and impact levels of 12 anthropogenic and climatic pressures.ResultsThe observed TL patterns meet spatial expectations, revealing that the assessment units in the Caribbean Sea are more threatened than those in the Pacific Ocean, and continental areas are more threatened than the oceanic ones. Habitat transformation and sea warming were the threats with the most impact on coastal and marine ecosystems, respectively. Climatic threats were widely extended throughout the study area, occurring even in the most pristine zones (e.g., Malpelo Island).DiscussionClimate threats are challenging to national conservation strategies since these pressures are not completely manageable at local scales as they depend mainly on global efforts. Recommendations drawn from this work can guide actions for the conservation of the ecosystems of Colombia.

Abstract Introduction Exotic invasive species represent a major driver of the loss of biological diversity and services provided by ecosystems globally. An important cause of species becoming invasive is the development of commercial afforestation projects using fast-growing and adaptable exotic species, which may become invasive impacting natural environments. The tropical ash (Fraxinus uhdei), native to México, has been widely introduced to Colombia and other countries for timber, live fences, and urban greening. It is now common in many areas of the tropical mountains and has been observed expanding into native forests in Colombia. This study examined the invasion pattern and the demographic structure of tropical ash in remnant Andean forests in Colombia, to find out factors associated with the invasion process. The analysis took into account biotic and physical factors: distance to propagule source, vegetation cover types, and understory and canopy cover. Results Although the reproductive strategy of the tropical ash is of “r” type with low survival rates, the results show evidence for an active process of invasion characterized by an aggregated distribution pattern dominated by seedlings and juvenile plants. The study shows the existence of an interaction between the distance to propagule source and the vegetation cover, which has an additive effect on the demographic structure of the population. Conclusions This study suggests an active invasion process by the exotic tree tropical ash into a remnant of sub-humid forests in the Andean highlands. Our results showed an expanding population process with a decreasing average age from propagule sources and mature reproductive individuals within the native forest, which bring new individuals that are colonizing new areas and advancing into the forest. This research points to the need for urgent plant intervention on two aspects: the use of the tropical ash and the management of the invasion process in native forests.

As humanity’s demand for resources continues to rise and productive arable lands become increasingly scarce, many of Earth’s remaining intact regions are at heightened risk of destruction from agricultural development. In situations where agricultural expansion is inevitable, it is important to manage intact landscape transformation so that impacts on environmental values are minimised. Here, we present a novel, spatially explicit, land use planning framework that addresses the decision making needed to account for different, competing economic-environment objectives (agricultural production value, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service retention) when land use change is inevitable within an intact landscape. We apply our framework to the globally significant savannahs of the Orinoquia (Colombia), which in a post-conflict era is under increased agricultural development pressure. We show that while negative environmental impacts can be reduced through planning, the total area of land converted to agriculture is the unavoidable principal driver of biodiversity and ecosystem service loss. We therefore identify planning solutions that perform well across all objectives simultaneously, despite trade-offs among them. When 15%, 20%, 30% and 40% of the study area is allowed to be converted to agriculture, on average planning can improve species persistence and ecosystem service retention by up to 16%, 15%, 12%, and 9%, respectively, when compared to agricultural-focused solutions. Development in the region so far has had an unnecessarily large impact on environmental objectives due to a lack of effective land use planning, creating an ‘opportunity debt’. Our study provides an evidence base to inform proactive planning and the development of environmentally sensible agricultural development policy and practice in the region. This framework can be used by stakeholders to achieve agriculture expansion goals and maximise economic profit while minimising impacts on the environment in the Orinoquia, or any relatively intact region that is being developed.

Monitoring land change at multiple spatial scales is essential for identifying hotspots of change, and for developing and implementing policies for conserving biodiversity and habitats. In the high diversity country of Colombia, these types of analyses are difficult because there is no consistent wall-to-wall, multi-temporal dataset for land-use and land-cover change.To address this problem, we mapped annual land-use and land-cover from 2001 to 2010 in Colombia using MODIS (250 m) products coupled with reference data from high spatial resolution imagery (QuickBird) in Google Earth. We used QuickBird imagery to visually interpret percent cover of eight land cover classes used for classifier training and accuracy assessment. Based on these maps we evaluated land cover change at four spatial scales country, biome, ecoregion, and municipality. Of the 1,117 municipalities, 820 had a net gain in woody vegetation (28,092 km(2)) while 264 had a net loss (11,129 km(2)), which resulted in a net gain of 16,963 km(2) in woody vegetation at the national scale. Woody regrowth mainly occurred in areas previously classified as mixed woody/plantation rather than agriculture/herbaceous. The majority of this gain occurred in the Moist Forest biome, within the montane forest ecoregions, while the greatest loss of woody vegetation occurred in the Llanos and Apure-Villavicencio ecoregions.The unexpected forest recovery trend, particularly in the Andes, provides an opportunity to expand current protected areas and to promote habitat connectivity. Furthermore, ecoregions with intense land conversion (e.g. Northern Andean Páramo) and ecoregions under-represented in the protected area network (e.g. Llanos, Apure-Villavicencio Dry forest, and Magdalena-Urabá Moist forest ecoregions) should be considered for new protected areas.