Biodiversity impact assessment considering land use intensities and fragmentation

The data provide supplementary information for the paper entitled "Biodiversity impact assessment considering land use intensities and fragmentation".

Coverage of the characterization factors

• 5 species groups: plants, amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles
• 5 broad land use types: cropland, pasture, plantations, managed forests, and urban areas
• 3 land use intensities: minimal, light, intense (sometimes, intensity levels had to be merged because the data did not allow to differentiate between them)
• 825 terrestrial ecoregions of the world (according to WWF / Olson et al. 2001)

Files

Main data

• CF.csv: characterization factors (CFs) for ecoregions and 5 species groups

Taxonomically aggregated data

• CF_kingdom.csv: CFs aggregated from 5 species groups to plant and animal kingdoms
• CF_domain.csv: CFs aggregated from plant and animal kingdoms to the domain of Eukaryota

Spatially aggregated data

• CF_country.csv: CFs aggregated from ecoregions to countries
• CF_global.csv: CFs aggregated from ecoregions to the globe

Taxonomically and spatially aggregated data

• CF_kingdom_country.csv: CFs aggregated to countries and plant and animal kingdoms
• CF_domain_country.csv: CFs aggregated to countries and the domain of Eukaryota
• CF_kingdom_global.csv: CFs aggregated to the globe and plant and animal kingdoms
• CF_domain_global.csv: CFs aggregated to the globe and the domain of Eukaryota

Units

CFs for land occupation: PDF/m2

CFs for land transformation: PDF⋅yr/m2

Columns

• realm: 2-letter code to identify one of 8 biogeographical realms
• biome: ID to identify one of 14 biomes
• eco_id: ID to identify the ecoregion, combining numbers for the realm, biome, and ecoregion within each biome nested within each realm
• eco_name: ecoregion name
• species_group: species group
• kingdom: kingdom as a taxonomic rank
• habitat_id: ID to link to the land use type and intensity as used in land_use.tif. An ID with .5 represents a merged land use class considering the two habitats with the IDs when rounding the value both up and down.
• habitat: land use type and intensity
• CF_*: characterization factor
• *_occ*: land occupation
• *_tra*: land transformation
• *_avg*: average approach
• *_mar*: marginal approach
• *_reg: regional relative species loss
• *_glo: global relative species loss
• *_rsd: relative standard deviation as a measure of spatial uncertainty due to aggregation (only concerns country and globally aggregated CFs)
• quality_*: data quality, distinguishing between original estimates and the use of proxies
• objectid: object id of the country
• iso3cd: iso3 code of the country
• romnam: romanized name of the country
• m49code: M49 code of the country, a standard code used by the United Nations
• weighting: aspect based on which the CFs were weighted (only concerns globally aggregated CFs)

Data quality

• original: original estimate (for globally aggregated CFs: mostly original estimates, proxies only considered in areas with current land use)
• proxy_intensity: intensity level was missing; CF was derived from another CF of the same ecoregion and land use type but different intensity level and scaled to the right intensity level
• proxy_type: land use type was missing; CF was derived from the average regional CFs for light use in the same biome and the ecoregion-specific GEP and scaled to the right intensity level if needed
• proxy_gep: global extinction probability (GEP) was missing (only concerns CFs for global relative species loss); GEP estimated based on average GEP per area unit in the same biome and the ecoregion area
• proxy_partial: some species groups were missing but not all (only concerns taxonomically aggregated CFs); aggregation done based on partly original estimates and partly proxies
• proxy_neighbours: country was missing (only concerns country-aggregated CFs); values were estimated based on the average of the three nearest neighbouring countries
• proxy: proxies were considered even in areas without current land use (only concerns globally aggregated CFs)

Note: proxies in country-aggregated CFs apply to at least one of the ecoregions overlapping with the country and not necessarily all ecoregions

Land use type and intensity data

Raster file: land_use.tif

Spatial resolution: 0.08333333, 0.08333333  (x, y)

Spatial extent: -180, 180, -90, 90  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)

Coordinate reference system: WGS 84 (EPSG:4326)

Codes

1. Primary_vegetation_Minimal  (incl. sparse/no vegetation)
2. Cropland_Intense
3. Cropland_Light
4. Cropland_Minimal
5. Managed_forest_Intense
6. Managed_forest_Light
7. Managed_forest_Minimal
8. Pasture_Intense
9. Pasture_Light
10. Pasture_Minimal
11. Plantation_Intense
12. Plantation_Light
13. Plantation_Minimal
14. Urban_Intense
15. Urban_Light
16. Urban_Minimal

Changes in version 1.0.1 (June 2026)

Fixed a bug in the calculation of characterization factors for land transformation, where the factor 0.5 (see Equation 4 of the related publication) was inadvertently omitted.