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Compositional Integrity

Compositional integrity relates to the variety of life itself—the species that make up an ecosystem. A compositionally intact ecosystem is one that retains its native species in their natural abundances. The loss of species, or a significant change in their relative abundances, is a clear indicator of ecological degradation.

Methodology

To measure compositional integrity, our index utilizes the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII).

Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)

The BII estimates the average abundance of a region’s originally-present species relative to an undisturbed baseline. It is a widely recognized metric in global conservation science (Scholes & Biggs, 2005).

Data Source: We use high-resolution BII data produced by Impact Observatory (Gassert et al., 2022). This dataset provides a globally consistent and up-to-date measure of compositional integrity at 300m resolution.

Implementation

The compositional component effectively ingests the BII data, ensuring it aligns temporally and spatially with the other integrity pillars.

  • Metric: Biodiversity Intactness Index (0-1 scale)
  • Resolution: 300m

See the API Reference for calculate_compositional_integrity.