Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
A mathematical foundation of modelling thermal injury and repair dynamics in ectotherms
Published: 2026-06-18
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Evolution, Life Sciences, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis
As global temperatures rise and extreme heat events impair ectotherm performance and survival, it is becoming increasingly important to predict how organisms accumulate and repair thermal injury under realistic benign and stressful temperatures. The thermal death time (TDT) model quantifies how heat events translate into thermal injury, but under natural temperature fluctuations the TDT model is [...]
“Ecological and Conservation Governance Condition Analysis Using Ecological Diversity Indices: A Study of Bhawal National Park”
Published: 2026-05-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Abstract: Once a historical biodiversity hotspot, the Bhawal National Park (BNP) in Bangladesh faces severe threats to its ecological integrity, despite its protected status. Located approximately 40 km north of Dhaka, the park’s original coppice Sal forest (Shorea robusta) ecosystem is now fragmented and degraded due to illegal deforestation and encroachment, leading to a drastic decline in [...]
Towards Nature Positive supply chains: From biodiversity commitments to organisational action
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Policy, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Large organisations are critical to halting and reversing biodiversity loss, and increasingly making bold commitments for nature. However, translating commitments into action requires robust strategies to fully identify, quantify, trace, and act. This is particularly pertinent because most organisational impacts are hidden within complex supply chains. Here we present a novel, generalised, and [...]
Multi-scale collapse of coral cover under climate change
Published: 2026-04-09
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Biology, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Marine Biology, Mathematics, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Survival Analysis, Systems Biology
Projecting ecosystem trajectories under future climates is critical for conservation planning, yet remains constrained by uncertainty arising from limited data, ecological complexity, and biological and environmental variability. Variability, when disentangled from uncertainty, offers critical insights into population and community dynamics. For example, enhanced vital rates (growth, survival, [...]
Biodiversity footprint of public procurement in Finland
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Halting biodiversity loss requires systematic action from all sectors of society. The public sector is a significant actor globally in creating markets for goods and services, public procurement representing on average 13 – 20% of national gross domestic product. In this study, we assessed the biodiversity footprint of public procurement in Finland for years 2021 and 2022. We applied the [...]
Delivering Nature Positive outcomes through landscape conservation: credible actions and shared responsibility in the mining sector
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
The mining sector is increasingly expected to align their corporate nature commitments with global biodiversity goals. Emerging Nature Positive frameworks require companies not only to mitigate impacts of direct operations, but also to contribute to biodiversity recovery at the landscape scale, where impacts, dependencies and conservation priorities intersect. Yet expectations for credible [...]
On the spatial aggregation of condition metrics for ecosystem accounting
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
In face of the ongoing nature crisis, the international community is setting targets and deciding on actions to combat the current biodiversity crises. For this to be effective they need tools to accurately describe the current situation and to monitor trends in ecosystems over time. Ecosystem condition accounts (ECA) is one such tool that use variables and indicators to describe key ecosystem [...]
England’s statutory biodiversity metric offers lessons in ensuring metrics for nature markets measure true change
Published: 2025-09-17
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
The need for standardized metrics for measuring losses and gains in biodiversity has resulted in many countries, and private sector initiatives, looking to adapt the England’s Statutory Biodiversity Metric for mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). BNG requires a minimum 10% uplift in biodiversity units out of infrastructure development, and these number of biodiversity units depends in part on [...]
Shaping the future of ecological restoration: Integrating predictability and adaptive insights
Published: 2025-08-06
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Forest Management, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Introduction: Ecological restoration must move beyond fixed historical baselines to face the realities of climate change, biodiversity loss, and complex socioecological dynamics. Framework for restoration: We propose the Future-Based Approach (FaBRestor), a novel framework that reframes restoration as a forward-looking, adaptive process. FaBRestor integrates multitemporal lenses—past legacies, [...]
Accounting for biodiversity impacts of consumption and production: current gaps and frontiers.
Published: 2025-05-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Sustainability
The way humans produce and consume material goods continues to be a primary driving force on biodiversity decline. Despite significant advances in quantifying biodiversity footprints, important differences exist across types of approaches and indicators. These include, what aspects of biodiversity are measured and how they are reported. In this scoping review, we provide an overview of [...]
Decline of the globally rare old-growth specklebelly lichen, Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis, and its implications for temperate rainforest conservation
Published: 2025-04-25
Subjects: Biodiversity, Botany, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology
Epiphytic lichens are key components of temperate rainforests, where they contribute to forest hydrology, nutrient cycles, food webs, and overall biomass and biodiversity. Despite their ecological importance and sensitivity to environmental change few protections exist for lichen conservation and management. Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis, or old-growth specklebelly lichen, is considered an [...]
Spatially varying population indices
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Population Biology
Large scale monitoring is fundamental for reliably tracking the fate of animal populations under changing environments and land-use practices. A common application of large scale population monitoring data is to produce indices of temporal change in species abundances, which are used in environmental policy assessments of species and biodiversity statuses. For index estimation, spatio-temporal [...]
From Vegetation to Vulnerability: Integrating Remote Sensing and AI to Combat Cheatgrass-Induced Wildfire Hazards in California
Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Computational Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
Wildfire risk is on the rise around the world. In places like California, this risk is further instigated by the invasive species cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). Cheatgrass is highly flammable and benefits from wildfires, allowing it to replace native plant communities. Through increasing both the intensity and the frequency of wildfires, it endangers not only its natural environment but also human [...]
Making use of spatially biased variables in ecosystem condition accounting – a GIS based workflow
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring
Ecosystem Condition Accounts (ECA) should reflect the integrity or quality of all nature inside the scope of the account, and therefore rely on spatially representative indicators for condition. All ECAs are subject to data constraints in some way. Therefore, being able to make use of spatially biased data sets would be very valuable. For national ECAs, modelling approaches can in some cases be [...]
Global metrics for terrestrial biodiversity
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
Biodiversity metrics are increasingly in demand for informing government, business, and civil society decisions. However, it is not always clear to end users how these metrics differ or for what purpose they are best suited. We seek to answer these questions using a database of 573 biodiversity-related metrics, indicators, indices, and layers, which address aspects of genetic diversity, species, [...]