To advance sustainable stewardship, we must document not only biodiversity but geodiversity

Abstract

Rapid environmental change is driving the need for complex and comprehensive scientific information that supports policies aimed at managing natural resources through international treaties, platforms, and networks. One successful approach for delivering such information has been the development of essential variables for climate, oceans, biodiversity, and sustainable development goals. Although the current essential variables frameworks account for the biosphere, atmosphere, and some aspects of the hydrosphere, they largely overlook geodiversity—the variety of abiotic features and processes of the land surface and subsurface. Analogous to biodiversity, geodiversity is important for the maintenance of ecosystem functioning and services, and areas high in geodiversity have been shown to support high biodiversity.