The Living Vermont Index is a multi-species indicator based on average trends in population abundance of plant and animal species from Vermont. Tracking the status and trends of wildlife is critical both for understanding the health of the ecosystems on which we rely, but also to identify those animals and places that are most in need of conservation action.
The Living Vermont Index (LVI) is modeled after the Living Planet Index and others. It is designed to track the abundance of plant and animal populations across the state. Together, the trends that emerge will be used as a measure for changes in Vermont’s biodiversity. It does this in much the same way that a stock market index tracks the value of a set of shares.
The building blocks for this index is the Living Vermont Database, an ever-growing catalog of species population monitoring schemes and data gathered from as many sources as possible. The majority of these are publicly available and are found in scientific literature or online repositories of plant and wildlife census data.
One of our challenges is to make sure we have robust data for as many taxonomic groups and regions as possible for population trends. While there are comprehensive monitoring projects for some species in Vermont, especially birds, records of population trends for many groups are sparse.
If you have a dataset to contribute, please join us and register it with the Living Vermont Database.
