Assessing wasp biodiversity potential of german ecosystems: establishing a baseline for ecosystem health evaluation

Details

Supervisors

Defourny, Pierre ; Radoux, Julien

Faculty

Faculté des bioingénieurs

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences agronomiques et industries du vivant, à finalité spécialisée: Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation for Environmental Modelling and Management

Abstract

The biodiversity is rapidly declining worldwide, and conservation and management projects are subsequently increasing in importance. Since perturbations of ecosystems are expected to increase in the future, it is of paramount interest to increase ecosystem resilience, which is largely affected by biodiversity. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the wasp biodiversity potential for different terrestrial ecosystems in Germany to establish a baseline for an ecosystem health evaluation. The biodiversity potential was computed for 200 ecosystem clusters created based on biophysical LifeWatch ecotope data using three different clustering algorithms, namely K-means, GMM and Genie. The clustering algorithms were evaluated against EUNIS habitat data, and the algorithm with the highest average purity score was selected for further analysis. Then, the number of unique wasp species was calculated for any cluster with >100 GBIF samples. Further, a health status was calculated for five cities in Germany to demonstrate the application of the biodiversity potential to assess ecosystem health. This study showed that the Genie clustering algorithm could form clusters with the highest agreement with the EUNIS habitat data. Interestingly, the clusters formed using Genie were indicated by the intrinsic quality metrics to be the least well-distinguished. Central and central-eastern Germany were identified as the regions with the highest wasp biodiversity potential, while central-western Germany had the lowest wasp biodiversity potential. Also, areas with a high wasp biodiversity potential exhibited a good agreement with Natura 2000 protection areas both within the five cities and within all of Germany, supporting the validity of the findings. Finally, this study introduces an inexpensive and fast method to establish a baseline for ecosystem health assessments. It can be applied to a wide range of ecosystems and is thus optimal for policymakers and researchers to quickly gain knowledge about the state of the ecosystems in a larger area. While the application of the biodiversity potential as a baseline requires further work, this study lays an important foundation.

Citations

• APA

Scheel, M. (2024). Assessing wasp biodiversity potential of german ecosystems: establishing a baseline for ecosystem health evaluation.