The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Ecosystem integrity is the degree to which an ecosystem's composition, structure and function remain within the range of its natural variation. Integrity erodes gradually through degradation, then can collapse when a threshold is crossed: a reef that shifts to algae, a forest edge that becomes savanna, a clear lake that turns turbid. This page sets out how condition is measured against a reference, how thresholds are recognised, and what the evidence can and cannot tell the authorities that manage land and sea.
GCRI · Established · service level R0
Ecosystem integrity is the degree to which an ecosystem's composition, structure and function stay within the range of its natural variation. It erodes gradually through degradation and can collapse when a threshold is crossed, such as a reef shifting to algae. Condition is measured against a reference state and assessed with the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems.
Mountain ranges, deserts, wetlands, glaciers and reefs, and how remote each division is from large cities, shown for the Hindu Kush Himalaya as an example geography for this subject.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Ecosystem integrity · Landscape A · Assessment cycle 1
materiality, 0 low to 100 high
Scores are placeholders for an assessment the owner completes.
sites near high-integrity areas
| Water scarcity at site 3 | Physical, acute | Abstraction and drought | High | Water stewardship plan |
| Habitat conversion in supply chain | Transition, market | Land use change | Medium | Supplier screening |
| Community objection | Systemic, social | Consent gaps | Medium | Consent records review |
| Pollinator decline | Physical, chronic | Pesticide use | Low | Monitor |
Habitat condition and ecological thresholds. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Logging, grazing, pollution, invasive species and altered fire or flow regimes each remove a little structure or function. Condition declines long before extent does, so an ecosystem can look intact on a land-cover map while losing its species and processes.
Reinforcing feedbacks hold an ecosystem in one state until a driver pushes it past a threshold. Shallow lakes, kelp forests, coral reefs and rainforest margins can flip to a degraded state that persists even after the pressure eases.
Warming, nutrient enrichment, fragmentation and harvesting interact. A reef weakened by runoff recovers more slowly from a marine heatwave; a fragmented forest dries and burns more readily. Combined effects are often larger than the sum of their parts.
Lost integrity reduces the services ecosystems supply: water regulation, soil stability, fisheries, pollination and carbon storage. Those reductions reach water utilities, farms, insurers and lenders through supply chains, asset values and public budgets.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem condition | The quality of an ecosystem measured by its abiotic and biotic characteristics against a reference, as SEEA Ecosystem Accounting defines it. |
| Regime shift | A large, persistent change in an ecosystem's structure and function after a threshold is crossed. |
| Red List of Ecosystems | The IUCN standard for assessing the risk of ecosystem collapse, with categories from least concern to collapsed. |
| Biodiversity Intactness Index | An estimate of the average abundance of originally present species in an area relative to an undisturbed reference. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem extent by type | square kilometres per Global Ecosystem Typology unit | annual | Satellite classification and national maps | OBSERVED |
| Biodiversity Intactness Index | percent of reference-state abundance | periodic | Statistical model on compiled field surveys | MODELLED |
| Forest Landscape Integrity Index | dimensionless index | periodic | Remote sensing of pressures and connectivity | MODELLED |
| Red List of Ecosystems risk category | category from least concern to collapsed | per assessment | IUCN Red List of Ecosystems assessments | OFFICIAL |
| Ecosystem condition index | dimensionless, relative to reference condition | per accounting period | SEEA Ecosystem Accounting condition accounts | ESTIMATED |
| Human footprint | dimensionless pressure score | periodic | Mapped settlement, roads, land use and night lights | MODELLED |
| Early warning signals of transition | variance and autocorrelation of a state variable | per time series | Long-term monitoring series | ESTIMATED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| IUCN Red List of Ecosystems | Risk-of-collapse assessments of ecosystem types against standard criteria | Free for non-commercial use, terms of use |
| IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology | A hierarchical classification of ecosystem functional groups across all realms | Free and open, attribution |
| Biodiversity Intactness Index (Natural History Museum, PREDICTS) | Modelled intactness of local species assemblages from compiled field studies | Free and open, attribution |
| Forest Landscape Integrity Index | Forest condition from observed pressures, inferred pressures and lost connectivity | Free and open, attribution |
| ESA WorldCover and Copernicus Land Monitoring Service | Land cover and change for ecosystem extent | Free and open, attribution |
| National ecosystem accounts under SEEA | Extent and condition accounts compiled by national statistical offices | Public records, terms per agency |
| International Long Term Ecological Research network | Multi-decade site measurements of ecosystem state and processes | Terms per site |
Biodiversity Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Environment ministries and national statistical offices | Which ecosystems to prioritise for protection and restoration in the national biodiversity strategy | Extent and condition by ecosystem type; risk-of-collapse categories with their criteria |
| Protected-area and land management authorities | Where condition is declining toward a threshold and which pressure to reduce first | Condition trends with early warning signals; pressure maps by driver |
| Planning and environmental assessment authorities | Whether a proposed development pushes a threatened ecosystem toward collapse | Red List of Ecosystems status, condition at the site, cumulative pressure in the landscape |
| Financial supervisors and institutions | Which portfolios are exposed to ecosystem degradation and collapse | Condition and threshold evidence linked to the locations of assets and suppliers |
Integrity is easy to invoke and hard to measure. Experts work on a small set of recurring questions.
Ecosystems are held in a particular state by feedbacks. A forest shades its floor and keeps it moist, which suppresses fire; a clear lake supports rooted plants that hold sediment and absorb nutrients, which keeps it clear; a reef with abundant grazers keeps algae in check. Pressure such as clearing, nutrient pollution or overfishing weakens these feedbacks without visible change, until a disturbance tips the system into an alternative state held by different feedbacks: grassland instead of forest, turbid water instead of clear, algae instead of coral.
Resilience depends on diversity within functional groups, on connectivity that lets species recolonise, and on the slow variables, such as soil depth or nutrient stocks, that change over decades. Because these properties are eroded quietly, condition indicators that track only extent can miss decline until recovery is expensive or no longer possible.
Plot surveys of vegetation structure, indicator species and soil or water quality give the most direct evidence. They are costly, sparse and often not repeated on the same sites.
Satellite and airborne data track extent, canopy structure, productivity and disturbance across large areas, through Earth observation. They measure proxies for condition, not species or function directly.
Composite indices compare current condition with a reference. Their results depend heavily on the reference chosen, which should always be stated.
Rising variance or slower recovery from small disturbances can precede regime shifts in some systems. They need long, dense time series and can give false alarms.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.