Deliverable 2.2: Biodiversity indicator database for focus regions

To quantify human-driven impacts on biodiversity, we used advanced modeling techniques paired with a few key variables such as habitat quality, vegetation structure, climate, and topography to develop an innovative predictive model that estimates both 1) current biodiversity patterns and distributions and 2) a baseline model of biodiversity. By comparing both of these models, we are able to identify regions with significant human-driven reductions in species richness, endemism, and species composition across both of our focus regions, South America and Africa.

The files provided in this repository (1 km2 resolution) include:

1- Species richness (number of species).

2- Endemism (species rarity). For this metric, we used the corrected weight endemism index, which is the inverse of a species’ range size and effectively assigns higher scores to species with more restricted distributions. For this index, we used species ranges found within our study area (of South America and Africa).

3- Species composition of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants (which species occur in a given location). This metric, also known as beta diversity, summarizes which sets of species occur at each location. For this, we used the Sorensen index metric, as it does not depend on species absence data.

These results provide a valuable first step in describing human-induced changes in vegetation and biodiversity patterns across both South America and Africa.