BERI v2: Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index: 30s global time series

Note: a new and updated version of BERI has now been published superseding this collection. The updated version is available via the Data Access Portal at the following link: https://data.csiro.au/collection/csiro:72585v4. The collection associated with this page will remain for the near term for legacy purposes.

CSIRO Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index (BERI v2) is a global 30 arc-second product for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. BERI measures the capacity of natural ecosystems to retain species diversity in the face of climate change, as a function of ecosystem area, connectivity and integrity. The indicator 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 analyzing the functional connectivity of each grid-cell of natural habitat 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 cell of interest. The indicator can then be aggregated and reported by any desired spatial unit – e.g. an ecosystem type, a country, or the entire planet.

The BERI can be used to monitor and report past-to-present trends in the capacity of ecosystems to retain species diversity in the face of ongoing climate change by repeatedly recalculating the indicator using best-available mapping of ecosystem condition or integrity observed at multiple points in time, e.g. for different years. It can also serve as a leading indicator for assessing the contribution that proposed or implemented area-based actions are expected to make to enhancing the present capacity of ecosystems to retain species diversity, thereby providing a foundation for strategic prioritisation of such actions by countries.

Aggregation of the raw data for reporting by a region (country, ecoregion etc.) should follow the procedure in the folder " Calculating weighted geometric means of CSIRO BILBI indicators for a region." An example R script provided in the same folder can be used to perform these calculations.