Applying Ecological Diversity Indices With Ecosystem Approach At Ecoregional Level And Prioritizing The Decree Of New Protected Natural Areas

One of the main challenges of the new Protected Natural Area prioritization is using the appropriate tools to determine which of the areas are more representative at the ecoregional level. In this work, we used ecological diversity indices (EDIs) with an ecosystem approach as a tool to compare the differences in ecosystem diversity among different ecoregions. After comparing five EDI at coastal and marine ecoregions on Northwestern Mexico, it is concluded that out of the five indices analyzed for ecosystem diversity, the Simpson's Inverse and Hill indices were the most sensitive ones, considering the trends of their charts, variations, and the distance between their range values, which describe ecosystem diversity more accurately among different ecoregions. However, in order to describe the richness and heterogeneity of the analyzed ecoregions, the Simpson's Inverse index was the most useful to define which of the regions have greater diversity of ecosystems in comparative studies among them, and therefore the priority to be enacted as a new Protected Natural Area.