Abstract
There is an increasing need for aggregated biodiversity indicators to
inform policy decisions at all levels from local to global. Despite
their similar policy goals, low-level (e.g. local, regional) and
high-level (e.g. continental, global) indicator development is generally
performed independently, and the resulting indicators are often
incompatible both in their structure and data requirements. In this
paper we focus on a particularly flexible aggregation framework
originally developed for global assessments, the Natural Capital Index.
We show that with the use of appropriate fine-scale data, the NCI
framework can be applied in low-level policy contexts as well. To
support this statement, we show that several established low-level
indicators are essentially conforming to the NCI framework, and can be
seen as existing low-level NCI implementations. The concept is
illustrated with an implementation for Hungary, and the potential
advantages and shortcomings of low level NCI implementations are
discussed. NCI-based low level indicators can be implemented in any
region, where a local indicator of ecological quality is systematically
surveyed. Given the recent surge in monitoring activities worldwide,
fuelled by global change and reporting obligations, fine-scale NCI
implementations can become important additions to existing ecological
state indicators useful in a wide range of local and regional policy
contexts.
Keywords
Biodiversity index, Habitat quality, Naturalness, Vegetation condition, Ecosystem services
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