Speaker
Description
Ecological integrity has become a central objective in international and national conservation and restoration policies, yet its practical definition and monitoring remain highly heterogeneous. Here, we review how ecological integrity is defined and measured across ecosystems and scales, and identify key challenges in translating broad conceptual definitions into operational indicators. Definitions of ecological integrity generally converge around three recurring elements: ecosystem composition, structure and function; reference conditions; and resilience. However, approaches differ in whether integrity is assessed through ecosystem attributes directly or inferred from the absence of anthropogenic pressures. Likewise, indicators vary greatly depending on ecosystem type, spatial scale, data availability and management objectives. Local assessments often rely on field-based measures of ecosystem components, while regional to global assessments increasingly depend on remote sensing and human pressure proxies. As spatial extent increases, monitoring feasibility improves but ecological specificity often declines. We show that this mismatch between holistic definitions and selective indicators is driven not only by conceptual ambiguity, but also by practical constraints such as data availability, monitoring costs and policy requirements. Reference conditions further complicate assessments, as they involve historical, spatial and normative choices that can strongly influence interpretations of integrity. We argue that no single indicator can adequately capture ecological integrity and that portfolio approaches combining pressure, state, function and resilience indicators are more informative. Rewilding provides a particularly relevant test case because it targets ecosystem processes, trophic complexity and stochastic disturbance regimes at broad spatial and temporal scales. Overall, improving ecological integrity monitoring will require clearer monitoring objectives, explicit reference frameworks, and greater investment in long-term and spatially explicit ecological data collection.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | Yes, I’m willing to present as a poster. |