What is the Species Richness Score (SRS)?
Posted by Choyster
Following consultation with users and the ACT Government we are happy to introduce version one of our Species Richness Score (SRS). By inferring the number of species in a certain site and assigning weightings to species respective conservation levels we can give users a general idea of the makeup and health of your local environment!
Species richness is the number of species in the ecological communities that are within each map boundary.
The SRS assigns a weighting to each species based on their significance within their ecological community. For each boundary these scores are summed together to give its SRS.
The higher the number of threatened or migatory species within a location, the higher it's SRS will be.
This score is indicative of the biodiversity's health in a given location.
Each boundary’s SRS will be accompanied by a Survey Effort Score (SES) representing the number of sightings/hectare within a boundary.
The SES will indicate if a boundary is 'data deficient' i.e., the boundary requires further survey(s) and sighting(s) so that its SRS is a fair representation of the biodiversity found within it. Then the SRS can be used as an approximate comparison for other boundaries.
| Conservation level | Weighting |
|---|---|
| Critically endangered | 5 |
| Endangered | 4 |
| Vulnerable | 4 |
| Threatened | 4 |
| Migratory | 4 |
| Vagrant native | 4 |
| Rare native | 3 |
| Local native | 3 |
| Cosmopolitan | 3 |
| Non-local native | 2 |
| Exotic | 1 |
| Locally extinct | 1 |
| Unknown | 1 |
The SRS for a given location is calculated using the following equation:
SUM (weighting of each species recorded at the location)
Assigned weightings, representative of species' ecological significance range from 1 to 4
- Threatened, migratory species (4)
- Rare, local native, cosmopolitan species (3)
- Non-local native (2)
- Exotic, locally extinct species, unknown (1)
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