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INTEGRATING REPRESENTATION AND VULNERABILITY: TWO APPROACHES FOR PRIORITIZING AREAS FOR CONSERVATION
Citation:
Lawler, J. J., R D. White, AND L. L. Master. INTEGRATING REPRESENTATION AND VULNERABILITY: TWO APPROACHES FOR PRIORITIZING AREAS FOR CONSERVATION. ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS. Ecological Society of America, Ithaca, NY, 13(6):1762-1772, (2003).
Description:
One fundamental step in conservation planning involves determining where to concentrate efforts to protect conservation targets. Here we demonstrate two approaches to prioritizing areas based on both species composition and potential threats facing the species. The first approach involves a graphical representation of both the contribution of an area to protecting species diversity and the degree to which the area is vulnerable to threats from three basic anthropogenic factors. We determined the relative contribution of each of 487 equal-area sites in the Middle Atlantic region of the U.S. for protecting 559 animal species. For each site, we calculated a measure of irreplaceability, a statistic derived from reserve-selection theory that measures the potential contribution of a site to sets of sites that protect all species. To determine which of these areas were most vulnerable to threats by human activities, we measured three attributes of the landscape: the proportions of a site devoted to agriculture, industrial and residential development, and open mines. We then classified areas with respect to both irreplaceability and the three indicators of vulnerability, highlighting a subset of the sites with high irreplaceability as targets for more immediate conservation actions. Our second approach involved integrating site vulnerability into a site-selection procedure. This integration allowed us to locate sets of relatively vulnerable sites that protected all species. These two analyses provide guidance for conservation in the Middle Atlantic region as well as demonstrate two potential tools for solving complex conservation planning problems.