Biodiversity and Habitat Changes Modelling Experiences in Ukraine and Eastern Europe Countries

Abstract

This is updated study on biodiversity and its conditions in Ukraine and seven surrounding countries. It includes four different methods: the indicative-index approach, the Mean Species Abundance (MSA) and two species based approaches, one using habitat changes as driving factor (EEBIO) and the other includes climate change (SDM_GLM, BIOCLIM). The indicative-index methodology ‘BINU’ dealt with 128 species and 98 agrobiodiversity indicators-indices, and demonstrated low impact of climate change from 1950-2002. The EEBIO approach links species distribution maps, compiled from different sources to habitat change maps, resulting in a series of 900 GIS maps. The MSA-approach gives a general view and shows a low impact of climate change by 2002, and a high impact due to habitat loss. The GLM-approach provided detailed species-based maps of the expected changes in habitats condition caused by land use change and climate change, contrary to BIOCLIM. Finally, the selected 55 indicator species (vascular plants, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals) demonstrated a surprising diversity of GLM-trends by 2030-2050. It proved that expected climate change, together with land-use change would provoke numerous expected and unexpected species-habitat alterations. GLM- and BIOCLIM-based scenarios can not be the same. If the final GLM-scenarios are correct, then in the near future in Ukraine in particular, scientists and decision makers will by 2050 find about 4% of new species or will lose up to 13% of existing species.