Biodiversity Impact Factors for Land Use Across 825 Terrestrial Ecoregions

825 terrestrial ecoregions are characterized with factors for assessing biodiversity loss from land use. The data provides characterization factors for five species groups across five land use types and three intensities, aggregated to various taxonomic and spatial scales. Laura Scherer from Leiden University created this dataset to supplement a scientific paper on biodiversity impact assessment.

Use Cases

• Quantify regional biodiversity loss from land occupation based on characterization factors for 5 species groups and 5 land use types.
• Model global biodiversity impacts of agricultural expansion using aggregated characterization factors at the country or global level.
• Assess uncertainty in biodiversity impact assessments using the provided relative standard deviation measures for spatially aggregated factors.
• Compare biodiversity impacts across different land use intensities (minimal, light, intense) within specific ecoregions or biomes.

Strengths

• Covers 825 terrestrial ecoregions globally, providing a fine spatial resolution for impact assessment.
• Includes characterization factors for 5 distinct species groups (plants, amphibians, birds, mammals, reptiles) and 5 broad land use types.
• Offers data aggregated at multiple taxonomic levels (species group, kingdom, domain) and spatial scales (ecoregion, country, global).
• Provides measures of spatial uncertainty (relative standard deviation) for aggregated characterization factors.

Limitations

• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale processing.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics for some columns (e.g., objectid, weighting) must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Laura Scherer, Leiden University, via paperswithcode.

Collection Method

Created as supplementary information for a scientific paper on biodiversity impact assessment.

Geography

Global, based on 825 terrestrial ecoregions defined by WWF/Olson et al. 2001.