NatureServe
Encyclopedia
NatureServe is a non-profit conservation organization whose mission is to provide the scientific basis for effective conservation action. NatureServe and its network of natural heritage programs are the leading source for information about rare and endangered species and threatened ecosystems in the Americas.
NatureServe represents an international network of biological inventories—known as natural heritage programs or conservation data centers—operating in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. NatureServe collects and manages detailed local information on plants, animals, and ecosystems. It also develops information products, data management tools, and conservation services to help meet local, national, and global conservation needs. The information about species and ecosystems developed by NatureServe is used by many sectors of society—conservation groups, government agencies, corporations, academia, and the public—to make informed decisions about managing our natural resources.
NatureServe is an IUCN Red List
partner and, along with its member programs and collaborators, use a suite of factors to assess the conservation status of plant, animal, and fungal species, as well as ecological communities and systems. These assessments lead to the designation of a NatureServe conservation status rank. These ranks are a valuable resource for government agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Canadian Wildlife Service
, and others responsible for administration of state and provincial species conservation laws.
NatureServe Explorer is an online database that is a source for information on more than 70,000 plants, animals, and ecosystems of the United States and Canada. NatureServe Explorer includes particularly in-depth coverage for rare and endangered species.
In the United States, NatureServe maintains the National Vegetation Classification Standard
for the United States as well as the International Classification of Ecological Communities, currently focused on the Western Hemisphere.
, president of The Nature Conservancy
(TNC), to arrange the donation of the 24000 acres (97.1 km²) Santee Coastal Reserve, Joseph Hudson, chairman of South Carolina’s Wildlife and Marine Resources Department, wished to identify other preservation-worthy lands in the state. He provided TNC with initial funding to create an inventory capable of amassing information that could support both conservation and land-use decision-making while accounting for impacts on biodiversity.
While establishing that first program, TNC chief scientist Robert Jenkins, Jr., developed an innovative, scientific approach to site inventory. Instead of selecting a site for conservation and then inventorying it—as was the norm to date — the focus of the inventory became those biological features in need of conservation attention. The collective distribution of these features would then suggest priority sites for protection. In this context, targeted features included both species and natural communities, or to use the term that was coined to reflect this inclusiveness, elements of natural diversity. This concept of natural diversity was in many ways the functional equivalent of biological diversity, or biodiversity
, a term introduced and popularized more than a decade later by E. O. Wilson
.
Programs in West Virginia, Mississippi, and Oregon followed in 1975. By 1976, TNC had developed a model for expanding the emerging state network: go to the states and offer to hire and train a staff of biologists, establish an operating center, set up the computers, kick off data collection, and, two years later, let the state take over operations. By 1993, the U.S. network consisted of organizations in all fifty states, providing consistent nationwide data for improving conservation decision-making. Programs also began to be formed in Latin American countries in 1982 and now cover in 11 countries; the Canadian programs first established in 1988 now extend to all provinces and Yukon Territory.
As the network of natural heritage data centers matured, the individual programs began to see the need for increased network-wide collaboration and cooperation as well as new opportunities for the programs’ data and expertise to influence conservation decisions. At the state level, the environmental review functions of natural heritage program contributed to decision-making processes on major infrastructure projects. They also helped inform how best to manage natural resources for biodiversity protection and other public benefits. But big multi-state projects like natural gas pipelines demanded a coordinated effort. By the early 1990s, a group of natural heritage program directors began focusing on the development of network-wide information products. This effort led to the establishment of an independent nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the products and services of the network.
Incorporated in 1994 as the Association for Biodiversity Information (ABI), this membership organization created the institutional framework for broader network-wide coordination. In 1999, TNC’s natural heritage network and ABI formally joined forces, with the Conservancy transferring its databases, professional staff, and scientific standards and methodology to ABI. In 2001, having grown into its present form, this new, independent nonprofit became known as NatureServe.
The NatureServe network today represents the most comprehensive database of scientific information about the nation’s rare and threatened plants, animals, and ecosystems. This information relies on rigorous scientific methods and quality control — the methodology designed by Jenkins remains the defining characteristic of NatureServe's member programs — and now represents more than 35 years of field inventory, data collection, and analysis of species and ecosystems.
NatureServe represents an international network of biological inventories—known as natural heritage programs or conservation data centers—operating in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. NatureServe collects and manages detailed local information on plants, animals, and ecosystems. It also develops information products, data management tools, and conservation services to help meet local, national, and global conservation needs. The information about species and ecosystems developed by NatureServe is used by many sectors of society—conservation groups, government agencies, corporations, academia, and the public—to make informed decisions about managing our natural resources.
NatureServe is an IUCN Red List
IUCN Red List
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , founded in 1963, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the world's main authority on the conservation status of species...
partner and, along with its member programs and collaborators, use a suite of factors to assess the conservation status of plant, animal, and fungal species, as well as ecological communities and systems. These assessments lead to the designation of a NatureServe conservation status rank. These ranks are a valuable resource for government agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Canadian Wildlife Service
Canadian Wildlife Service
The Canadian Wildlife Service or CWS is a branch of the Department of the Environment, also known as Environment Canada, a department of the Government of Canada....
, and others responsible for administration of state and provincial species conservation laws.
NatureServe Explorer is an online database that is a source for information on more than 70,000 plants, animals, and ecosystems of the United States and Canada. NatureServe Explorer includes particularly in-depth coverage for rare and endangered species.
In the United States, NatureServe maintains the National Vegetation Classification Standard
United States National Vegetation Classification Standard
The National Vegetation Classification Standard or NVCS is a scheme for classifying the vegetation of the United States.The non-profit group NatureServe maintains the NVCS for the U.S. government.-External links:...
for the United States as well as the International Classification of Ecological Communities, currently focused on the Western Hemisphere.
The NatureServe Network
The natural heritage network supported today by NatureServe began in 1974 with the creation of the South Carolina Heritage Trust. After working with Patrick NoonanPatrick Noonan
Patrick F. Noonan is an American conservationist, and was president of The Nature Conservancy, from 1973 to 1980, and the Conservation Fund....
, president of The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy is a US charitable environmental organization that works to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive....
(TNC), to arrange the donation of the 24000 acres (97.1 km²) Santee Coastal Reserve, Joseph Hudson, chairman of South Carolina’s Wildlife and Marine Resources Department, wished to identify other preservation-worthy lands in the state. He provided TNC with initial funding to create an inventory capable of amassing information that could support both conservation and land-use decision-making while accounting for impacts on biodiversity.
While establishing that first program, TNC chief scientist Robert Jenkins, Jr., developed an innovative, scientific approach to site inventory. Instead of selecting a site for conservation and then inventorying it—as was the norm to date — the focus of the inventory became those biological features in need of conservation attention. The collective distribution of these features would then suggest priority sites for protection. In this context, targeted features included both species and natural communities, or to use the term that was coined to reflect this inclusiveness, elements of natural diversity. This concept of natural diversity was in many ways the functional equivalent of biological diversity, or biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
, a term introduced and popularized more than a decade later by E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....
.
Programs in West Virginia, Mississippi, and Oregon followed in 1975. By 1976, TNC had developed a model for expanding the emerging state network: go to the states and offer to hire and train a staff of biologists, establish an operating center, set up the computers, kick off data collection, and, two years later, let the state take over operations. By 1993, the U.S. network consisted of organizations in all fifty states, providing consistent nationwide data for improving conservation decision-making. Programs also began to be formed in Latin American countries in 1982 and now cover in 11 countries; the Canadian programs first established in 1988 now extend to all provinces and Yukon Territory.
As the network of natural heritage data centers matured, the individual programs began to see the need for increased network-wide collaboration and cooperation as well as new opportunities for the programs’ data and expertise to influence conservation decisions. At the state level, the environmental review functions of natural heritage program contributed to decision-making processes on major infrastructure projects. They also helped inform how best to manage natural resources for biodiversity protection and other public benefits. But big multi-state projects like natural gas pipelines demanded a coordinated effort. By the early 1990s, a group of natural heritage program directors began focusing on the development of network-wide information products. This effort led to the establishment of an independent nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the products and services of the network.
Incorporated in 1994 as the Association for Biodiversity Information (ABI), this membership organization created the institutional framework for broader network-wide coordination. In 1999, TNC’s natural heritage network and ABI formally joined forces, with the Conservancy transferring its databases, professional staff, and scientific standards and methodology to ABI. In 2001, having grown into its present form, this new, independent nonprofit became known as NatureServe.
The NatureServe network today represents the most comprehensive database of scientific information about the nation’s rare and threatened plants, animals, and ecosystems. This information relies on rigorous scientific methods and quality control — the methodology designed by Jenkins remains the defining characteristic of NatureServe's member programs — and now represents more than 35 years of field inventory, data collection, and analysis of species and ecosystems.
See also
- Community (ecology)Community (ecology)In ecology, a community is an assemblage of two or more populations of different species occupying the same geographical area. The term community has a variety of uses...
- Conservation biologyConservation biologyConservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
- Conservation ethicConservation ethicConservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world: its, fisheries, habitats, and biological diversity. Secondary focus is on materials conservation and energy conservation, which are seen as important to...
- Conservation movementConservation movementThe conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental and a social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including animal, fungus and plant species as well as their habitat for the future....
- Conservation scienceConservation scienceConservation science is the interdisciplinary study of cultural heritage conservation through the use of scientific inquiry and analytical equipment...
- EcologyEcologyEcology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
- Ecology movementEcology movementThe global ecology movement is based upon environmental protection, and is one of several new social movements that emerged at the end of the 1960s. As a values-driven social movement, it should be distinguished from the pre-existing science of ecology....
- Endangered speciesEndangered speciesAn endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
- EnvironmentalismEnvironmentalismEnvironmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
- Environmental movementEnvironmental movementThe environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....
- Environmental protectionEnvironmental protectionEnvironmental protection is a practice of protecting the environment, on individual, organizational or governmental level, for the benefit of the natural environment and humans. Due to the pressures of population and our technology the biophysical environment is being degraded, sometimes permanently...
- Habitat conservationHabitat conservationHabitat conservation is a land management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore, habitat areas for wild plants and animals, especially conservation reliant species, and prevent their extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range...
- Natural environmentNatural environmentThe natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
- Natural capitalNatural capitalNatural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital to goods and services relating to the natural environment. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future...
- Natural resourceNatural resourceNatural resources occur naturally within environments that exist relatively undisturbed by mankind, in a natural form. A natural resource is often characterized by amounts of biodiversity and geodiversity existent in various ecosystems....
- Natural resource managementNatural resource managementNatural resource management refers to the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations ....
- NatureServe conservation status
- Renewable resourceRenewable resourceA renewable resource is a natural resource with the ability of being replaced through biological or other natural processes and replenished with the passage of time...
- Sustainable developmentSustainable developmentSustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
- SustainabilitySustainabilitySustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...