NSW Spatial Resilience Index: Landscape Biodiversity Capacity Under Future Climate

The NSW Spatial Resilience Index estimates landscape capacity to retain biodiversity under future climate scenarios, ranging from 0.0 (completely isolated) to 1.0 (fully connected). It is produced by the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water using habitat condition data from 2013 and climate projections centered on the 2070s. The index is available at a 250-meter spatial resolution.

Use Cases

• Prioritizing conservation areas based on projected habitat connectivity under future climates.
• Modeling species distribution shifts based on habitat suitability and dispersal distances.
• Assessing the impact of past habitat loss and fragmentation on future ecological resilience.

Strengths

• Index values range from 0.0 to 1.0, providing a standardized metric for comparison.
• Data is available at a 250-meter spatial resolution.
• Incorporates multiple plant dispersal distances (3.125–25 km) to simulate connectivity across taxa.
• Combines results across multiple future climate scenarios, accounting for average and worst-case outcomes.

Limitations

• Model accuracy, currency, and completeness are limited by the input data available at the time of assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Collection Method

Adapts the Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index using habitat condition mapping and Generalised Dissimilarity Modelling of vascular plants under NARCliM 1.0 climate scenarios.

Time Range

Habitat condition baseline from 2013; climate projections centered on the 2070s.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-17 17:52:07.433003; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New South Wales, Australia