Ecological Land Units (ELUs)

Conservation planning at any scale requires an understanding of patterns of environmental variation and biological diversity. Data on the biological distributions of individual species are often inadequate for a large-scale analysis of biodiversity due to lack of comprehensive inventories across large regions. In the absence of suitable biological datasets, conservation science has recognized that physical diversity can be an acceptable surrogate for biological diversity. This recognition led to the development of the Ecological Land Unit, or ELU.