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.
2017 has been a year of change. As our scientists often say, “change is the new normal.” With each day that passes, the forces of global change—the warming climate, expanding human footprint, and loss of forests, grasslands, shores, and waters—threaten biodiversity and all life that depends on it.
The purpose of the EcoVeg classification approach is to describe the diversity of terrestrial ecosystems across the globe and inform decisions about conservation and resource management.
To achieve the goal of sustaining healthy diverse, and resilient coastal and marine habitats and living marine species in the Gulf of Mexico, resource managers need a way to take the pulse of this vast ecosystem, to evaluate its health and its ability to provide needed ecosystem services.
In support of natural resource agencies in Canada, the USA, and Mexico, we report on a series of component analyses and an updated Landscape Conservation Design for temperate grassland conservation. We targeted twelve major grassland ecosystem types that occur across the Great Plains and Chihuahuan Desert regions. Component analyses included: a) documenting long-term trends in extent by grassland type, b) identifying species of concern associated with the major grassland types, c) documenting current protected areas including each grassland type, d) assessing landscape intactness and connectivity among grassland areas, and, e) identifying Grassland Potential Conservation Areas to advance grassland conservation.
This report identifies National Park Service programs for which the proposed methodology would provide a complementary or significantly expanded set of tools to guide the conservation of biological and ecological resources
We conducted a broad-scale conservation assessment for vascular plants that occur in the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC). The primary outcome is a prioritized list of rare, highly threatened, declining, or sensitive plant species identified for conservation action.
Increasing attention to pollinators and their role in providing ecosystem services has revealed a paucity of studies on long-term population trends of most insect pollinators in many parts of the world. Because targeted monitoring programs are resource intensive and unlikely to be performed on most insect pollinators, we took advantage of existing collection records to examine long-term trends in northeastern United States populations of 26 species of hawk moths (family Sphingidae) that are presumed to be pollinators.
Canada is home to an estimated 140,000 species, only about half of which have been scientifically identified. These plants, animals, lichens, and fungi belong to
a vast organic tapestry—the diversity of life at genetic, species, and ecosystem levels. This biodiversity is vital for environmental, economic, and social health.
