Living Planet Index Austria
Abstract
Loss of biodiversity is one of the major challenges of the anthropocene. Various indices are used to quantify biodiversity. For vertebrates, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) uses the Living Planet Index (LPI). It is calculated globally, as well as separately for the species occurring in terrestrial, freshwater and marine biomes. Action to prevent biodiversity loss can be taken by countries or provinces, so it is important to understand changes in biodiversity at local scales. We present LPIs for vertebrates in Austria, both unweighted and weighted according to species richness. Vertebrate populations have declined more strongly in Austria than at the global scale, and biodiversity stabilized at about 30% of the initial biodiversity in the base year 1986 - the LPI declined from 1 in 1986 to ~0.3 (unweighted) or ~0.7 (weighted). In the current project we aim at calculating a new LPI Austria 2020 with additional data series.
Publikationen
Project staff
Klaus Hackländer
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Biol. Dr.rer.nat. Klaus Hackländer
klaus.hacklaender@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-83211
BOKU Project Leader
01.06.2020 - 31.12.2020