City Biodiversity Index of Lucknow City: A case study

Abstract

Biodiversity index of a city is a self-assessment tool which helps the city to evaluate the present condition of the urban biodiversity, what are the current conservation strategies, the strength and weaknesses of the existing plan and what policies we need to take in the future for improvement. The whole work is conducted by extensive field survey and data collection and by the implementation of a Geographical Information System (GIS). The indicators are calculated by collected data following the manual of the ‘Singapore index of cities biodiversity’. This is the first application of the index to the city where we describe the profile of the city and baseline measurements were done as indicators. All indicators are assigned with a particular range of points i.e., 0-4, which helps us to determine the current condition of biodiversity in Lucknow City. The total score of the 12 indicators (excluding indicators 4-8) is 30 points and the maximum point is 92 i.e., 32.60% which is below average that means a new conservation strategy needs to be taken and need to improve the old ones. This index is not a tool to be used only once, it needs to apply at regular time intervals for better results and development.

Keywords

• Biodiversity Index
• Conservation
• Indicators
• Natural area