Biodiversity Intactness Index [BIP]

Biodiversity Intactness Index [BIP]
Indicator description
The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) indicates the average abundance of a large, taxonomically, and ecologically diverse set of naturally-occurring species in a terrestrial area, relative to a baseline with minimal human impacts. BII was first proposed by Scholes & Biggs (2005). BII estimates the status of local terrestrial biodiversity; average BII is meaningful at any spatial scale, making it easy to estimate status and trends within any desired region (e.g. UN subregion, country or biome).
BII was first estimated globally by Newbold et al. (2016) as part of the PREDICTS project (www.predicts.org.uk) by combining models of overall abundance with models of abundance-based compositional similarity and global fine-scale (1km) estimates of land use and other pressures. The modelling framework has now been refined, especially for compositional similarity, improving the ability to detect human impacts on assemblage composition. This approach to BII estimation is discussed in detail by Purvis et al. (2018).
Because BII is estimated based on statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to land use and related pressures, it can be projected for any past or future date for which estimates of pressures are available. As a result, BII can report not only on current status and recent trends (using observed data on pressures), but also on the longer history of biodiversity change; and it can be used for policy screening of scenarios.