Biodiversity Modelling Experiences in Ukraine

Abstract

Biodiversity modeling in Ukraine was recently developed in order to support policy making and for providing information to e.g. the reporting to the UN Convention of Biological Diversity. This is the first and highly ambitious study on biodiversity and its conditions in Ukraine and some surrounding countries. It includes four different methods to assess and project biodiversity changes: the indicative-index approach, the GLOBIO Mean Species Abundance (MSA) and two species based approaches, one using habitat changes as driving factor (EEBIO) and the other includes climate change (SDM_GLM). The indicative-index methodology dealt with 128 species and demonstrated low impact of climate change from 1950-2002, and is presented in a special Web-agro-biodiversity-searchable ‘BINU’ system for the users in Ukraine. It contains 96 agro-biodiversity indicators-indices. The EEBIO approach links species distribution maps, compiled from different sources to habitat change maps, resulting in a series of 800 GIS maps. The MSA-approach gives a general view of the intactness of biodiversity and shows a low impact of climate change by 2002 and a high impact due to habitat loss. A training package for educational purposes is derived from the analyses. The SDM-GLM-approach provided detailed species-based maps of the expected changes in habitats condition caused by land use change and climate change. Finally, the selected 54 indicator species (vascular plants, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals) demonstrated a surprising diversity of SDM-GLM-trends by 2030-2050. It proved that expected climate change, together with land-use change would provoke numerous expected and unexpected species-habitat alterations. If the final model is correct, then in the near future in Ukraine in particular, scientists and decision makers will by 2050 find about 4% of new species or will lose up to 13% of existing species.