IDENTIFYING HABITATS AT RISK OF SPECIES LOSS DUE TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

This report provides a first assessment of which Scottish habitats contain the highest proportion of species that might be at risk from environmental change. The approach combines quadrat-based information on community composition from a resurvey of Scottish habitats with a set of environmental preference data relating to climate, edaphic and disturbance preferences.

The combined data allows for the identification of species within each habitat that display preferences far from the mean preference of the species in the habitat, and to aggregate this to identify habitats with the highest proportion of species that might be at risk of environmental change due to the linkage between the preference values and known environmental gradients.