Assessment example: Guajiran Seasonal Dry Forest

Reproducible examples

Author

Affiliations

J. R. Ferrer-Paris

Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales

IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management

About this website

This website provides an example of a RLE assessment using data from the IUCN Red List of Ecosystem (RLE) assessment for the tropical and temperate forests macrogroups of the Americas.

The original continental assessment and analysis was published by Ferrer-Paris et al. (2019). The continental-scale assessment was a flagship project of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystem Thematic group and is used as an example for many other applications of the RLE (Bland et al. 2019; Nicholson et al. 2024). This was one of the main examples used to illustrate the application of Ecosystem indices in Rowland et al. (2019).

An official summary of the original assessment is available in the RLE assessments database, and the original results dataset and other project data are available in several open repositories (Ferrer-Paris 2018, 2023, 2025; Ferrer-Paris and Zager 2021).

There is a critical need to update and improve this continental scale assessment as new information is available. However, here we only use this example to illustrate the methods and workflow. This example should not replace formal assessments at national or regional scales. Users should be aware of the caveats of large scale assessment and we encourage to use the best available data and methods for decision making and reporting.

Bland, Lucie M., Emily Nicholson, Rebecca M. Miller, Angela Andrade, Aurélien Carré, Andres Etter, José Rafael Ferrer-Paris, et al. 2019. “Impacts of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems on Conservation Policy and Practice.” Conservation Letters 12 (5): e12666. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12666.

Ferrer-Paris, José Rafael. 2018. “IUCN Red List of Ecosystem assessment results for IVC Forest Macrogroups in the Americas region.” figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7488872.v1.

———. 2023. “Lista Roja de Ecosistemas de UICN de Los Bosques de Las Américas.” OSF. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/M6AFP.

———. 2025. “Resultados de La Evaluación de Lista Roja de Ecosistemas de Los Bosques de Las Américas.” OSF. osf.io/57bcv.

Ferrer-Paris, José Rafael, and Irene Zager. 2021. “IUCN Red List of Ecosystems of the Forest Macrogroups of the Americas: First Release of Original Dataset.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5168500.

Ferrer-Paris, José Rafael, Irene Zager, David A. Keith, María A. Oliveira-Miranda, Jon Paul Rodríguez, Carmen Josse, Mario González-Gil, Rebecca M. Miller, Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio, and Edmund Barrow. 2019. “An Ecosystem Risk Assessment of Temperate and Tropical Forests of the Americas with an Outlook on Future Conservation Strategies.” Conservation Letters 12 (2): e12623. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12623.

Nicholson, Emily, Angela Andrade, Amanda Driver, José R Ferrer-Paris, David Keith, Michael Sievers, and Simone Stevenson. 2024. “Beyond the Headline: Roles of the Red List of Ecosystems in Implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.” Nature Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02320-5.

Rowland, Jessica A., Lucie M. Bland, David A. Keith, Diego Juffe‐Bignoli, Mark A. Burgman, Andres Etter, José Rafael Ferrer‐Paris, Rebecca M. Miller, Andrew L. Skowno, and Emily Nicholson. 2019. “Ecosystem Indices to Support Global Biodiversity Conservation.” Conservation Letters 13 (1). https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12680.