1. Ecosystem Health Index Main Streams for Life
John MacKinnon
UNDP consultant
June 2012

2. What is it?
Ecosystem Health is taken as the suitability of a site to continue to provide secure conditions for survival of component species and delivery of key ecological services, including resilience to climate and other changes.
EHI is a not an evaluation. It is a dynamic, constantly varying index that reflects biodiversity health, just as a financial index reflects economic performance.

3. Why use it ?
EHI provides a baseline against which targets for maintaining or achieving a given level of health can be set
EHI can be used as a results based indicator of project achievement and impacts
EHI can indicate where the project is succeeding or failing and allow revision of activity efforts throughout the project
EHI is complimentary to the Management Effectiveness scorecard in project M & E.

4. What does it include ? There are three main components to the index
Habitat condition
Species welfare
Socio-economic context

5. A comment on stability
Although biodiversity can flourish under stable conditions, the EHI score does not necessarily reflect stability. Many wetland sites are very dynamic but what we are interested in is the ability of the biota to adapt to or even thrive with the changes. This will become increasingly important as climate and water flow patterns change.

6. Components of Habitat Condition
Maintenance of habitat extent and diversity
Maintenance of habitat quality (productivity, water supply, pollution, damage and physical conditions – nitrogen, oxygen, temperature, turbidity)
Adequacy of habitat connectivity
Stability of site (natural disasters)
Resilience to threats and changes
Levels of existing or planned threats

7. Components of species welfare
Containing and maintaining diversity of representative species (including important target species)
Indicator species show numerical stability or increases (good breeding levels, low mortality rates)
Incidence of hunting, poaching, alien species, new colonisation
Sustainability of harvest of commercial species
Response to disasters (fire, floods, droughts, pollution)

8. Elements of socio-economic context
Pressures on habitat and species from local communities (degree of dependence on natural resources, sustainability of off-take, etc.)
Additional threats or stresses from external developments (existing or planned)
Success of alternative livelihoods
Impacts from tourism or other disturbance
Levels of respect, support and co-management in protection, monitoring, research, fire fighting, etc.
Effective protection, boundaries, zones etc. in place

9. The EHI process Forming the monitoring team
Classifying and mapping main habitat types
Identifying main threats to be monitored
Identifying suitable indicator species to be monitored
Undertake baseline measurements
Calculate baseline index
Periodically repeat measurements
Analyze observed changes in relation to established targets
Report results and feed into project planning revisions
(Fist 6 steps will have expert assistance, local teams can undertake after that)

10. Need for simplicity and robustness
The BHI scorecard is designed for simplicity and robustness
Different teams should reach similar scores
Team members do not require high levels of litteracy, biological knowledge or statistical skills!!

11. Identifying key threats
Key threats have already been identified for each project area at the PIF stage. These can be reviewed at PPG stage.
Additional threats can be tagged for attention when local teams are assembled or if unpredicted changes occur during the project cycle.

12. Selection of indicator species
Conservation target species (n.b. rarely seen species give little data)
Commoner species that are sensitive to habitat quality – amphibia, dragonflies, birds
Easily identified – large mammals
Easily quantified (harvest levels of fish, crabs etc. or plants)
Alien species of concern

13. Indicator species selected to indicate different things

14. Monitoring habitat extent
Relatively simple habitat classification, mapped and measured from satellite or aerial imagery with some ground truthing
Resampled at minimum yearly intervals (maybe in 2 different seasons)
Routine ground monitoring can record condition details (see model report form)

15. Example habitat classification

16. Example of simple survey form

17. EHI Reporting Form

18. Reducing variance
Comparisons of counts of species or habitat extent or condition should be made in similar conditions of season and climate, location and methodology to allow for fairer comparison of trends.
Most of the species and habitat data required for EHI can be incorporated into routine monitoring programme of the wetland sites concerned.

19. Users Guide to be developed by consultant
Provides notes for each question to be completed
Suggests methodology to be used for each score including some examples
Provides standard inventory or monitoring techniques
Suggests standard parametric and non-parametric tests for testing significance of observed changes

20. Related Key documents/tools
Ramsar Handbooks 13 (Inventory, Assessment, Monitoring); 19 (Addressing change in ecological character)
IUCN – An Integrated Wetland Assessment Toolkit
CBD Global Biodiversity Outlook (2010 indicators)
Asian Wetland Inventory
Ramsar technical report 1 (rapid assessment of BioD0; 3 (valuation of services)

21. Training workshop
It is suggested that the consultant hold a training workshop in one of the project sites and staff from each other site can participate to undertake one demo baseline survey

22. Thank You ! 谢谢 !