IMPACTS

French biodiversity in the Anthropocene – impacts and drivers of spatial and temporal response

@ Wilfried Thuiller - Parc National des Ecrins, France

Understanding how biodiversity responds to various human pressures is more urgent than ever if we are to predict and mitigate future impacts to ensure the conservation of the Earth’s biodiversity. Yet our current knowledge is based on only a few groups (e.g., birds), to the detriment of other important taxa (e.g., invertebrates), and is based on heterogeneous data, indicators, and methods that prevent comparability.

The project IMPACTS will provide a comprehensive assessment of the impact of human pressures on the biodiversity of the French territory including French Guyana. Data, indicators and methods will be assessed and reviewed in order to provide a good practice framework including a set of guidelines. This framework will then be applied to data from scientific inventories and participatory sciences at national and regional scales and covering a wide range of taxonomic groups and biodiversity facets. This will allow quantifying the sensitivity of different taxonomic groups to change and illustrate how multiple facets of biodiversity are affected.