A function-based typology for Earth's ecosystems

David A Keith^{1

2

3}, José R Ferrer-Paris^{4

5}, Emily Nicholson^{5

6}, Melanie J Bishop⁷, Beth A Polidoro⁸, Eva Ramirez-Llodra^{9

10}, Mark G Tozer^{4

11}, Jeanne L Nel^{12

13}, Ralph Mac Nally¹⁴, Edward J Gregr^{15

16}, Kate E Watermeyer⁶, Franz Essl^{17

18}, Don Faber-Langendoen¹⁹, Janet Franklin²⁰, Caroline E R Lehmann^{21

22}, Andrés Etter²³, Dirk J Roux^{12

24}, Jonathan S Stark²⁵, Jessica A Rowland^{5

6}, Neil A Brummitt²⁶, Ulla C Fernandez-Arcaya²⁷, Iain M Suthers⁴, Susan K Wiser²⁸, Ian Donohue²⁹, Leland J Jackson³⁰, R Toby Pennington^{21

31}, Thomas M Iliffe³², Vasilis Gerovasileiou^{33

34}, Paul Giller^{35

36}, Belinda J Robson³⁷, Nathalie Pettorelli³⁸, Angela Andrade^{5

39}, Arild Lindgaard⁴⁰, Teemu Tahvanainen⁴¹, Aleks Terauds²⁵, Michael A Chadwick⁴², Nicholas J Murray^{4

5

43}, Justin Moat⁴⁴, Patricio Pliscoff^{45

46}, Irene Zager⁴⁷, Richard T Kingsford⁴

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. david.keith@unsw.edu.au.
² New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Hurstville, New South Wales, Australia. david.keith@unsw.edu.au.
³ IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, Gland, Switzerland. david.keith@unsw.edu.au.
⁴ Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁵ IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, Gland, Switzerland.
⁶ Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
⁷ Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁸ School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ, USA.
⁹ Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Oslo, Norway.
¹⁰ REV Ocean, Lysaker, Norway.
¹¹ New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Hurstville, New South Wales, Australia.
¹² Sustainability Research Unit, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
¹³ Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
¹⁴ School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
¹⁵ Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
¹⁶ SciTech Environmental Consulting, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
¹⁷ BioInvasions, Global Change, Macroecology-Group, Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
¹⁸ Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
¹⁹ NatureServe, Arlington, VA, USA.
²⁰ University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
²¹ Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
²² School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
²³ Departamento de Ecología y Territorio, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia.
²⁴ Scientific Services, South African National Parks, George, South Africa.
²⁵ Australian Antarctic Division, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
²⁶ Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK.
²⁷ Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro Oceanográfico de Baleares, Palma, Spain.
²⁸ Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand.
²⁹ Department of Zoology, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
³⁰ University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
³¹ College of Life and Environmental Sciences Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
³² Department of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University, Galveston, TX, USA.
³³ Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC), Heraklion, Greece.
³⁴ Department of Environment, Faculty of Environment, Ionian University, Zakynthos, Greece.
³⁵ School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
³⁶ School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
³⁷ Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Ecosystems, Harry Butler Institute, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
³⁸ Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, UK.
³⁹ Conservation International Colombia, Bogota, Colombia.
⁴⁰ Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre, Trondheim, Norway.
⁴¹ Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland.
⁴² Department of Geography, King's College London, London, UK.
⁴³ College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
⁴⁴ Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, UK.
⁴⁵ Institute of Geography, Department of Ecology, Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES), Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁴⁶ Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad, Santiago, Chile.
⁴⁷ Provita, Caracas, Venezuela.

PMID: 36224387
PMCID: PMC9581774
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05318-4

A function-based typology for Earth's ecosystems

David A Keith et al. Nature. 2022 Oct.

. 2022 Oct;610(7932):513-518.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05318-4. Epub 2022 Oct 12.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. david.keith@unsw.edu.au.
² New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Hurstville, New South Wales, Australia. david.keith@unsw.edu.au.
³ IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, Gland, Switzerland. david.keith@unsw.edu.au.
⁴ Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁵ IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, Gland, Switzerland.
⁶ Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.
⁷ Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁸ School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ, USA.
⁹ Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Oslo, Norway.
¹⁰ REV Ocean, Lysaker, Norway.
¹¹ New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Hurstville, New South Wales, Australia.
¹² Sustainability Research Unit, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
¹³ Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
¹⁴ School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
¹⁵ Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
¹⁶ SciTech Environmental Consulting, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
¹⁷ BioInvasions, Global Change, Macroecology-Group, Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
¹⁸ Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
¹⁹ NatureServe, Arlington, VA, USA.
²⁰ University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
²¹ Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
²² School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
²³ Departamento de Ecología y Territorio, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia.
²⁴ Scientific Services, South African National Parks, George, South Africa.
²⁵ Australian Antarctic Division, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
²⁶ Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK.
²⁷ Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro Oceanográfico de Baleares, Palma, Spain.
²⁸ Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand.
²⁹ Department of Zoology, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
³⁰ University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
³¹ College of Life and Environmental Sciences Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
³² Department of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University, Galveston, TX, USA.
³³ Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC), Heraklion, Greece.
³⁴ Department of Environment, Faculty of Environment, Ionian University, Zakynthos, Greece.
³⁵ School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
³⁶ School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
³⁷ Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Ecosystems, Harry Butler Institute, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
³⁸ Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, UK.
³⁹ Conservation International Colombia, Bogota, Colombia.
⁴⁰ Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre, Trondheim, Norway.
⁴¹ Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland.
⁴² Department of Geography, King's College London, London, UK.
⁴³ College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
⁴⁴ Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, UK.
⁴⁵ Institute of Geography, Department of Ecology, Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES), Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁴⁶ Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad, Santiago, Chile.
⁴⁷ Provita, Caracas, Venezuela.

PMID: 36224387
PMCID: PMC9581774
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05318-4

Abstract

As the United Nations develops a post-2020 global biodiversity framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity, attention is focusing on how new goals and targets for ecosystem conservation might serve its vision of 'living in harmony with nature'^1,2. Advancing dual imperatives to conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem services requires reliable and resilient generalizations and predictions about ecosystem responses to environmental change and management³. Ecosystems vary in their biota⁴, service provision⁵ and relative exposure to risks⁶, yet there is no globally consistent classification of ecosystems that reflects functional responses to change and management. This hampers progress on developing conservation targets and sustainability goals. Here we present the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Ecosystem Typology, a conceptually robust, scalable, spatially explicit approach for generalizations and predictions about functions, biota, risks and management remedies across the entire biosphere. The outcome of a major cross-disciplinary collaboration, this novel framework places all of Earth's ecosystems into a unifying theoretical context to guide the transformation of ecosystem policy and management from global to local scales. This new information infrastructure will support knowledge transfer for ecosystem-specific management and restoration, globally standardized ecosystem risk assessments, natural capital accounting and progress on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

**Fig. 1. The generic model of ecosystem assembly underlying the Global Ecosystem Typology.**
Boxes represent abiotic (resources, the ambient environment and disturbance regimes) and biotic (biotic interactions and human activity) drivers that filter assemblages and form evolutionary pressures that in turn, shape ecosystem-level properties (inner green circle). The range of major organizational scales at which drivers operate are shown in parentheses, followed by a list of the major expressions of the drivers. The species pool is the set of ‘available’ traits on which the assembly filters and evolutionary pressures operate over short and longer time frames, respectively. Species pools are dynamic products of vicariance, dispersal and evolution that depend on biogeographic context and history. The outer green circle (dashed line) represents the contemporary dispersal filter that mediates the biota currently subjected to local selection by the abiotic and biotic filters and pressures. The inner green circle represents the properties (aggregate ecosystem functions and species-level traits) that characterize the ecosystem. Closed arrows show the influence of filtering processes on ecosystem properties. Feedbacks can occur whereby ecosystem properties modulate filtering processes (examples are indicated by bidirectional arrows). Interactions among drivers include indirect effects of human activity on assembly through other drivers (black open arrows) and the indirect effects of ambient environmental conditions on assembly by modulating resource availability or uptake (dark blue open arrow). Interactions among other drivers (omitted here for simplicity) are shown in ecosystem-specific adaptations of this generic model for each ecosystem functional group (level 3 of the typology) in Supplementary Information, Appendix 4. See Supplementary Information, Glossary, for explanation of terms. Details are in Supplementary Information, Appendix 2. Illustrations (wildfire icon; Japan mt. fuji; shark) DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images.

**Fig. 2. Landscape and seascape relationships of ecosystem functional groups.**
Left, a sample of ecosystem functional groups (EFGs) from the Global Ecosystem Typology distributed across a hypothetical tropical landscape and seascape. Right, the total number of ecosystem functional groups (coloured boxes) within each realm and functional biome listed (the ecosystem functional groups illustrated on the left are represented by white dots). Multidimensional environmental gradients—three examples are shown: temperature, intensity of human use and light and nutrient availability—influence the strength and spatial expression of ecological drivers (resources, ambient environment, disturbance regimes, biotic interactions and human activity) across landscapes and seascapes, and therefore the spatial relationships of ecosystem types.

**Fig. 3. Hypothesized relationships of functional groups differentiated along gradients of selected assembly filters.**
a, The Tropical forests biome (T1), with temperature, elevation and water availability gradients. b, The Rivers and streams biome (F1), with stream gradient and temporal flow pattern. c, The Marine pelagic biome (M2), with depth and current gradients. In a, a third filter related to an edaphic environmental gradient differentiates group T1.4 from T1.1, but is not shown here (see Supplementary Information, Appendix 4, for details on the respective functional groups).

**Fig. 4. Current and potential applications of the Global Ecosystem Typology to conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem services.**
The typology provides a common ecosystem vocabulary and supports consistent treatment of ecosystems across applications where policy links exist between multiple initiatives. Details are presented in Supplementary Information, Appendix 4. Photo credit: Keith Ellenbogen (Ecosystem monitoring and management); Getty Images (Environmental education); KBA World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas at www.keybiodiversityareas.org; United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at: www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment.

See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

New catalogue of Earth's ecosystems.
McGill BJ, Miller SN. McGill BJ, et al. Nature. 2022 Oct;610(7932):457-458. doi: 10.1038/d41586-022-03078-9. Nature. 2022. PMID: 36224364 No abstract available.

References

1. Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. First Draft of the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 2021).
1. Nicholson, E. et al. Scientific foundations for an ecosystem goal, milestones and indicators for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Nat. Ecol. Evol.5, 1338–1349 (2021). - PubMed
1. Clark, J. S. et al. Ecological forecasts: An emerging imperative. Science293, 657–660 (2000). - PubMed
1. Gibson, L. et al. Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity. Nature378, 378–381 (2011). - PubMed
1. Bordt, M. & Saner, M. A. Which ecosystems provide which services? A meta-analysis of nine selected ecosystem services assessments. One Ecosyst.4, e31420 (2019).

Publication types

Actions

MeSH terms

Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources
Research Materials
- NCI CPTC Antibody Characterization Program

Save citation to file

Email citation

Add to Collections

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search

Create a file for external citation management software

Your RSS Feed

A function-based typology for Earth's ecosystems

Affiliations

A function-based typology for Earth's ecosystems

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

Comment in

References

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Research Materials