High integrity areasEcosystem Integrity Index (EII)

Ecosystem Integrity Index (EII)

The Ecosystem Integrity Index is a single, holistic measure of how healthy and intact terrestrial ecosystems are across the world.

Category: Transition risks · Sensitive areas · High integrity areas Coverage: Global Format: Raster grid (~300 m) Used in risk analysis: No (contextual layer; not used in materiality scoring)

What it shows

The Ecosystem Integrity Index is a single, holistic measure of how healthy and intact terrestrial ecosystems are across the world. It helps identify where ecosystems remain in good condition — and so are sensitive to disturbance — and where they are already degraded, which is central to assessing nature-related risk and dependency.

How it is built

The index is produced by The Landbanking Group (Leutner, 2025). It combines three dimensions of ecosystem health into one score: functional integrity (how productive the ecosystem is), structural integrity (the structure and connectivity of habitat) and compositional integrity (the make-up of the species present). These dimensions are integrated to give a continuous score from 0 (fully degraded) to 1 (fully intact), mapped globally on a fine grid of roughly 300 metres.

How to read it

Scores run from 0 to 1. Values close to 1 indicate intact, well-functioning ecosystems that warrant careful treatment; values close to 0 indicate heavily degraded ecosystems. A high score therefore flags a high-integrity, sensitive area near or at a site.

Source

The Landbanking Group — Ecosystem Integrity Index v1; Leutner, B. (2025). https://github.com/landler-io/ecosystem-integrity-index.

Comparison with the WWF Risk Filter Suite

This relates to WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter indicators S2_4 Ecosystem Condition (degraded) and S14_5 Ecosystem Condition (intact). WWF's ecosystem-condition indicator is a composite that pairs the EII with global functional connectivity, river fragmentation and a marine habitat measure. Darwin uses the EII on its own, so global functional connectivity, river fragmentation and marine habitat condition are not captured here.

Legend

Symbolised field: Integrity index

ClassColour
= 0% #3d000f
≤ 10% #5c0217
≤ 20% #a50026
≤ 30% #d73027
≤ 40% #f46d43
≤ 50% #fdae61
≤ 60% #fee08b
≤ 70% #d9ef8b
≤ 80% #a6d96a
≤ 90% #66bd63
≤ 95% #1a9850
≤ 100% #006837

Generated from darwin/layers/layer-ecosystem-integrity-index-eii.toml and risk_indicator_pairs.toml (develop).