Global biodiversity loss threatens ecosystem stability, food security, and human health worldwide. To better understand and quantify human impacts on ecosystems, assessment methods for estimating biodiversity footprints have been developed.
As part of the assessment, various biodiversity indicators capture how different anthropogenic pressures—such as land and water use or resource consumption—affect biodiversity. Although there are various methods and approaches for biodiversity footprint assessment, no single approach offers a comprehensive evaluation of the different levels and dimensions of biodiversity. Therefore, my research focuses on exploring how we currently measure biodiversity footprints, spotting where the gaps are, and helping improve these methods so they better reflect the complexity of nature and the pressures it’s under. I’ll be working on this at the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke), in the Nature Solutions unit.
