Abstract
Abstract
Ecological monitoring is a vital tool to help us assess habitat condition and understand the mechanism(s) for habitat change. Yet many countries struggle to meet their monitoring requirements in part due to the high assessment workload. Rapid ecological assessment methods may have an important role to play in this regard. Following their success within several European habitats (e.g., semi-natural grasslands), they are now being developed for additional habitats such as heathlands, peatlands, and other agri-associated areas. Whilst some rapid assessments using ecological scorecards have been shown to be accurate compared to traditional ecological monitoring, less is known about the functionality of these scorecards in heterogenous landscapes. In this study, we selected four existing scorecards to test alongside a prototype. We assessed how these different scorecards measured habitat condition on the same heathland sites. We found that the choice of metrics, their score weighting, and the thresholds used for categorical scores cause scorecards to assess the same site with substantial variation (37%). Vegetation metrics were the primary cause of score variation, with vegetation structure and positive indicator species being the leading causes. Our study indicates that while current scorecards may be representative of project-specific goals, they may not be suitable for wider monitoring uses in their current form. Ecological scorecards have great potential to drastically increase the extent of monitoring, but caution is needed before adapting existing scorecards beyond the purposes from which they were designed.
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLC
Reference58 articles.
1. Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES). Available at https://www.gov.ie/en/service/f5a48-agri-climate-rural-environment-scheme-acres [Accessed August 11, 2023).
2. Balmford, A., Gaston, K. J., Blyth, S., James, A., & Kapos, V. (2003). Global variation in terrestrial conservation costs, conservation benefits, and unmet conservation needs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(3), 1046–1050. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0236945100
3. The role of agri-environment schemes in conservation and environmental management;Batáry P;Conservation Biology,2015
4. Directive 2009/147/EEC of the European Parliament and the Council of 30;Birds Directive 2009/147/EEC
5. A Review of Condition Metrics Used in Biodiversity Offsetting;Borges-Matos C;Environmental Management,2023