Ecosystem Risk Assessment and Conservation Strategies

Ecosystem risk assessment has emerged as a critical tool for identifying natural systems that are declining in extent, function or resilience under pressures such as land-use change, climate shifts and pollution. By applying standardised criteria to measure distributional trends, rates of abiotic and biotic degradation, and probabilities of collapse, practitioners can classify ecosystems into threat categories and prioritise conservation actions. Conservation strategies informed by these assessments range from establishing protected areas and ecological corridors to implementing restoration projects and integrating nature-based solutions into land-use planning. Effective risk assessment underpins policy-making at multiple scales, supports natural capital accounting and enables progress towards global biodiversity targets through comparable, repeatable measures. The integration of risk criteria with spatially explicit ecosystem classifications further ensures that interventions are tailored to functional ecosystem types and local socio-ecological contexts, fostering resilient landscapes that sustain both biodiversity and human well-being.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have developed a function-based global ecosystem typology that provides a unified framework for assessing ecosystem risk and guiding conservation interventions. This classification integrates ecosystem functions, biotic composition and exposure to threats into spatially explicit units. By pairing this typology with standardised risk criteria, researchers are now able to conduct globally consistent ecosystem status evaluations, inform natural capital accounting and set targeted, scalable conservation actions from local restoration schemes to international biodiversity commitments.

Ecosystem Risk Assessment and Conservation Strategies publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in ecosystem risk assessment and conservation strategies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Ecological resilience: The capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbances and reorganise while undergoing state change so as to retain essential structure and function.

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems: A global standard offering a set of criteria to categorise the threat status of ecosystems based on distributional decline, functional degradation and rates of collapse risk.

Ecosystem collapse: A situation in which an ecosystem loses its defining biotic or abiotic characteristics, leading to loss of native biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Global Ecosystem Typology: A spatially explicit classification framework that organises Earth’s ecosystems according to functional and compositional traits to support consistent risk assessments and conservation planning.

Nature-based solutions: Actions that protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges such as climate adaptation while simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.

References

1. Using the Red List of Ecosystems and the Nature-based Solutions Global Standard as an integrated process for climate change adaptation in the Andean high mountains. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (2024).
2. A function-based typology for Earth’s ecosystems. Nature (2022).
3. An ecosystem risk assessment of temperate and tropical forests of the Americas with an outlook on future conservation strategies. Conservation Letters (2019).
4. Impacts of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems on conservation policy and practice. Conservation Letters (2019).
5. Scientific Foundations for an IUCN Red List of Ecosystems. PLOS ONE (2013).