Publications

Whitetop Pitcherplant (Sarracenia leucophylla), NatureServe Global Status: G5 (Secure). Photo by Will Parson, Chesapeake Bay Program.
  •   |   NatureServe

    Biodiversity in Focus: United States Edition

    This new analysis by NatureServe addresses five essential questions about biodiversity–the variety of life on Earth–that need to be answered if we are going to effectively conserve nature: 1) How many species and ecosystems are at risk? 2) Are species and ecosystems adequately protected? 3) What are the major threats to biodiversity? 4) Where is imperiled biodiversity concentrated? 5) Where do we go from here?
  •   |   Forests
    Rapid Ecological Integrity Assessment Metrics to Restore Wildlife Habitat and Biodiversity for Shortleaf Pine–Oak Ecosystems
    This paper provides practical, rapid ecological integrity metrics to guide Shortleaf Pine-Oak woodland ecosystems management for the restoration of habitat for focal wildlife.
  •   |   NatureServe
    A Species Habitat Model Standard for the NatureServe Network
    This standard places NatureServe and the Network in a better position to place the most current, complete, and consistent Biodiversity Location Data into the hands of researchers and decision-makers.
  •   |   NatureServe
    NatureServe's Strategic Plan 2022-2026
    In our 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, NatureServe commits to playing an even greater role in protecting biodiversity by providing the best available science, data, and technology to support biodiversity conservation. Learn more about the values that are core to NatureServe and how we are investing in our future.
  •   |   Natural Areas Journal
    Using Citizen Science Observations to Develop Managed Area Watch Lists
    This paper presents an automated process to use data from iNaturalist, a popular citizen science platform, and a United States national list of nonnative plant species to compile a provisional watch list of the 100 most frequently reported nonnative species within a 160 km buffer around a managed area. It demonstrates the application of the process using 36 US National Park Service units with relatively small operating budgets.
  •   |   CEMEX & Earth in Focus, Inc.
    Key Biodiversity Areas
    Key Biodiversity Areas highlights the critical role KBAs can play in shaping conservation strategies, including by guiding the expansion of protected areas, aligning with global biodiversity targets, informing safeguard policies and environmental risk assessments, and ultimately avoiding species extinction. NatureServe's own Dr. Healy Hamilton is a contributing author to the Introductory chapter.
  •   |   Nature Ecology & Evolution
    Priority list of biodiversity metrics to observe from space
    While most biodiversity data is collected by scientists on the ground, engineers continue to develop remote sensing products that allow us to detect large-scale changes on Earth from space. In a paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, Miguel Fernandez joined a team of scientists from agencies and institutes such as NASA and the UN Environment Program in evaluating how to maximize the potential for monitoring biodiversity by including data collected by satellites.
  •   |   Australian Journal of Botany
    Australian Vegetation Classification and the International Vegetation Classification Framework
    NatureServe and Network staff collaborated with Australian ecologists to apply NatureServe’s International Vegetation Classification (IVC) to Australian woodlands and grasslands, providing a comprehensive approach for describing and classifying ecosystems at multiple scales.
  •   |   Nature Ecology & Evolution
    A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets
    NatureServe, together with colleagues on the IUCN SSC Post-2020 Task Force and the Red List Committee contributed to the launch of the STAR (Species Threat Abatement & Restoration) metric. STAR offers, for the first time, a robust and spatially explicit indicator to track actions aimed at reducing threats to species. This fills a big hole in the global indicator library, allowing countries (and even corporations or investment banks) to quantify their efforts to improve conditions for the persistence of biodiversity. It also represents yet another conservation knowledge product based on the Red List.
  •   |   Conservation Biology
    Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada
    An analysis of vascular plants of the United States and Canada reveals that at least 51 native species have gone extinct since European settlement.
  •   |   Ensuring effective implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity targets
    Ensuring effective implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity targets
    Alongside researchers at the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), and the Institute of Biology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the study, Ensuring effective implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity targets, examines the global failure in delivering the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (strategic international goals adopted in 2010 to address the crisis of biodiversity loss).