Glossary

Alien species: An alien species is a species introduced outside its normal distribution. Invasive alien species are alien species whose establishment and spread modify ecosystems, habitats, or species.

Biological diversity (Biodiversity): Biodiversity means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.

Biome: Major ecological community, a division of the world’s vegetation that corresponds to a particular climate and is characterized by certain types of plants and animals, for example, tropical rain forest or desert.

Drivers (of ecosystem change): Any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes a change in an ecosystem.

Ecosystem: An ecological unit made up of a complex system of interactions between living communities (plants, animal, fungi, and microorganisms) and the environment they live in. Ecosystems have no fixed boundaries; a single lake, a watershed, or an entire region could be considered an ecosystem.

Ecosystem services: The benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food and water; regulating services such as flood and disease control; cultural services such as spiritual, recreational, and cultural benefits; and supporting services such as nutrient cycling that maintain the conditions for life on Earth.

Endemic: Restricted to a particular area. Used to describe a species or organism that is confined to a particular geographical region, for example, an island or river basin.

Genus (Genera pl.): Set of closely related species: a category in the taxonomic classification of related organisms, comprising one or more species. Similar genera are grouped into families.

Habitat: The place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs.

Habitat change: Change in the local environmental conditions in which a particular organism lives. Habitat change can occur naturally through droughts, disease, fire, hurricanes, mudslides, volcanoes, earthquakes, slight increases or decreases in seasonal temperature or precipitation, etc. However, it is generally induced by human activities such as land use change and physical modification of rivers or water withdrawal from rivers.

Invasive alien species: are those species that occur outside their natural range and threaten the existence of native plants and animals.

Land cover: The physical coverage of land, usually expressed in terms of vegetation cover or lack of it. The human use of a piece of land for a certain purpose (such as irrigated agriculture or recreation) influences land cover.

Taxon: Category of organisms, any of the groups to which organisms are assigned according to the principles of taxonomy, including subspecies, species, genus, family, order, class, and phylum.

Key documents

Biodiversity Communication. In: European Commission (2006). Halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010 – and beyond. COM 216. Available from eur-lex.europa.eu

Ecological Footprint. In: WWF International (2005). Europe 2005: The Ecological Footprint. Available from www.footprintnetwork.org

Global Biodiversity Outlook. In: Convention on Biological Diversity (2006). Global Biodiversity Outlook 2. Available from www.biodiv.org/gbo2

Kiev Resolution. In: UN Economic Commission for Europe Committee on Environmental Policy (2003). Declaration by the Environment Ministers at the Fifth Ministerial Conference “Environment for Europe”, Kiev, Ukraine, 21-23 May 2003. ECE/CEP/94/Rev.1. Available from www.unece.org/env/proceedings

Living Planet Index. In: WWF (2004). Living Planet Report. Available from www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/general/livingplanet/index.cfm

Message from Malahide. In: Duke, Guy (ed.) (2005). Biodiversity and the EU – Sustaining Life, Sustaining Livelihoods. Conference Report for the Malahide Stakeholder Conference. Available from ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/index_en.htm

Mid-term Assessment of the EU Biodiversity Action Plan. In: European Commission (2008). A Mid-Term Assessment of Implementing the EU Biodiversity Action Plan. COM 864. Available from http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/comm2006/index_en.htm

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. In: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis. Available from www.millenniumassessment.org

IUCN Red List. In: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Available from www.iucnredlist.org

SOER 2005. In: EEA (2005). The European Environment – State and Outlook 2005. Available from eea.europa.eu/highlights/20051122115248

TEEB Phase 1. In: European Commission (2008). The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity – Phase 1 (scoping) – Economic Analysis and Synthesis. Available from http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/economics/teeb_en.htm

Other resources

The European Union’s 2010 target: Putting rare species in focus: The full article is available at www.sciencedirect.com. Contact: fontaine@mnhn.fr.

Facts about Biodiversity Download a six-page summary of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: English | Spanish | French | Dutch

Facts about Desertification Download the six-page summary of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s Desertification Report.