Australia (Commonwealth Union) – Ecosystems have remained an interdependent series of various forms of life co-existing with other species for survival. The stress caused by various human activities and diseases in the past few decades has caused disruptions to many ecosystems.
An International multidisciplinary team of researchers, led by The University of New South Wales (UNSW), has created the world’s 1st comprehensive classification of the ecosystems spanning land, rivers and wetlands, and oceans. The ecosystem typology is expected to permit an increased coordination and effective biodiversity conservation that is critical for humans.
This broad collaboration has the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), consisting of 1400 member organizations, including several countries, the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, the PLuS Alliance – Arizona State University, King’s College London and UNSW with over 100 specialist ecosystem researchers from across the globe.
The research examines the science that fosters the typology and how it can bring about objectives in world policy that impact individual nations. With UNSW’s assistance, IUCN initiated the 1st public version of the typology in 2020, which has been improved and updated since.
The study was led by Professor David Keith and Professor Richard Kingsford from UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science, together with Professor Emily Nicholson from Deakin University. Professor Keith stated that it is the first time, they have the same platform that identifies, defines and describes the entire ecosystem of the world.
“It may seem rather odd that we haven’t had this before, but historically scientists have forged advances by working somewhat separately in marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. This is the first time that all of this detailed knowledge has been brought together into a single framework taking advantage of common theory across the disciplines,” he said, adding that the next major step for enhanced ecosystem management is to set up global maps and monitoring.
