By Zoe Lum
Ever since the advancement of conservation science, many concepts and frameworks have been created for the purpose of guiding conservation action. One of those concepts is ecological regions or ecoregions, as it is more commonly known. Ecoregions generalize the ecosystem structure based on macroscale patterns of ecosystems. They are designed to ease the visualization and understanding of similarities across a complex suite of biotic and abiotic features by grouping area into like categories.
Origin of ecoregions
The Canadian forest researcher Orie Loucks can be credited for being the first to propose the term “ecoregion” in 1962. R.G. Bailey and the U. S. Forest Service ECOMAP project introduced the ecoregion concept with the goal of optimizing national land-management targets in the late 1980s. This was when a shift in the focus of environmental management in the United States from individual natural resources to a more holistic ecosystem-scale approach occurred. J.M. Omernik also contributed significantly to the development of the ecoregion concept. Both of their hierarchical ecosystem classification systems prioritises the characteristics of ecosystem structure.
World Wildlife Fund-United States also introduced its own ecoregional approach shortly after, which the WWF family of agencies adopted and promoted widely. Their aim was to create a superior biogeographical unit for conservation planning at regional scales to the meet the four main goals of biodiversity conservation, based on the definition by Noss, and Noss and Cooperrider. The WWF ecoregions combine the element of mapping regional biodiversity patterns together with the element of prioritization of ecoregions for conservation action.
Key attributes
Ecoregions have several important traits that makes them viable in the field of environmental studies and resource management. Firstly, they serve as a holistic framework due to the fact that ecoregion boundaries are based on the study of spatial coincidences, patterning, and relationships, of an interfunctional set of environmental factors (e.g., climate, vegetation, soil, and landform). Using this framework, scientists and resource managers can focus on the implications of processes within the ecosystem instead of on isolated components of the larger system. Important clues to the sustainability of the ecosystem can be interpreted from the the natural processes and patterns contained in each ecoregion. Biodiversity is at the center of ecosystems, meaning that the ability of ecoregions to meet the habitat requirements of different species strongly define them.
By nature, it is common for ecoregions to exist in a range of sizes and be identified at different scales or levels of detail in a hierarchical manner. They can hence serve as flexible, multipurpose spatial frameworks which allow a diverse range of applications from monitoring, assessment to management and inventory. This would in consequence provide means for the integration of ideas with reference to consistent geographical units and ideally lead to consistent analysis and management. Ecoregions are also useful for comparative studies to understand how different combinations of environmental conditions relate to specific environmental responses.
Limitations and future directions
The ecoregions framework is only as useful as the ecoregions maps are. Ecoregion maps have been widely used to address issues in climate change, conservation and urban planning, natural resource management and so on. Though the mapping of ecoregions has advanced significantly for the past several decades, nonetheless, there remains much room to improve. The delineation of ecoregions while requiring subjectivity and expert judgement in most cases could be complemented by the more informed application of latest geospatial information technologies (GIS, remote sensing) and computational/analytical techniques. It is expected that as the understanding of the nature of ecological regions grows and GIS methods as well as technology become more advanced, scientists will be able to increase the potential and accuracy of ecoregions maps for better aid local, regional and global conservation.