Health – What’s needed for healthy targets, and how are they doing?
Health – What’s needed for healthy targets, and how are they doing?
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What are the key factors needed to keep our targets healthy? How are they doing now? Which targets are likely to get worse? Which ones need to be restored? These fundamental questions are the cornerstone of everything that follows in CAP. They are also the fundamental measures of success.
This section has 4 steps:
- Determine a small set of Key Attributes for each Target
- Describe "Good" Health for each Attribute
- Rate the Current Condition for the Attributes for each Target
- Review the overall Health Scorecard in the turboCAP software.
Let your intuition kick in, look for patterns, and look for any rankings that may seem out of whack. Go back and adjust any rankings to key attributes that need additional reflection.
Overall Process.
- Start out trying to identify 3 to 5 Key Attributes for each target; use the "starter sets."
- Don't work on the Ratings until you've settled on your first draft of Key Attributes.
- The turboCAP software is recommended for Health for two reasons: (1) it provides a "starter set" of key attributes for all major types of targets and (2) it generates the all-important Health Scorecard after ratings are entered. However, teams can start off working with flip charts or worksheets, and easily enter rating information later.
Hints for Selecting Key Attributes
- The Key Attribute is what’s really important for a target’s long-term health (e.g., flows in freshwater ecosystems; fire in woodland ecosystems; native vs. invasive species).
- Targets will have usually have key attributes related to their Size (area or population), Condition (composition and structure) and Ecological Processes.
- Key Attributes should be briefly worded, but sufficiently descriptive. Examples:
- Flows - timing, frequency and duration
- Fire regime - frequency, size, type of fires, severity
- Composition - characteristic native fish species
- Structure - vegetation age classes represented
- Look for attributes that may be seriously degraded by future human-caused threats. High-ranked stresses (e.g. invasive species) can help reveal the inverse key attributes (native species composition).
- Look for a parsimonious number of really key attributes (e.g. 4 to 6) … versus many desirable or descriptive characteristics.
- Avoid redundancy. Often two key attributes may be closely related; pick the one that provides the best early warning of future stress.
Hints for Rating Key Attributes
- The "Good" rating is the focus of turboCAP. The ratings (Very Good, Fair, Poor) can reflect gradations from Good.
- Description of Good. A narrative description is fine. Avoid using numbers unless they can be scientifically supported; however numbers can be used illustratively – such as “almost all (e.g. ~90%)”
- The description of the "Good" rating is absolute - not relative. It represents a viable condition or minimal integrity, perhaps with some human intervention required.
Note: turboCAP uses the approach and ratings from a Bioscience article: Are We Conserving What We Say We Are? Measuring Ecological Integrity within Protected Areas, by Jeff Parrish, David Braun & Bob Unnasch, September 2003. This seminal article has provided a foundation for CAP — identifying the key ecological attributes of focal targets, defining what constitutes viable condition, and providing metrics to rate their condition. Download at http://appliedconservation.com/bioscience_tnc_integrity_assessments/
Bioscience Rating Scale in more depth:
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