Abstract
AbstractThe importance of expert input to spatial conservation prioritization outcomes is poorly understood. We quantified the impacts of refinements made during consultation with experts on spatial conservation prioritization of Christmas Island. There was just 0.57 correlation between the spatial conservation priorities before and after consultation, bottom ranked areas being most sensitive to changes. The inclusion of a landscape condition layer was the most significant individual influence. Changes (addition, removal, modification) to biodiversity layers resulted in a combined 0.2 reduction in correlation between initial and final solutions. Representation of rare species in top ranked areas was much greater after expert consultation; representation of widely distributed species changed relatively little. Our results show how different inputs have notably different impacts on the final plan. Understanding these differences helps plan time and resources for expert consultation.
Highlights
Systematic conservation planning provides a framework for selecting locations to efficiently achieve conservation goals using ecological and socioeconomic information for a region (Margules & Pressey, 2000)
The final spatial prioritization highlighted a number of important areas distributed across Christmas Island (Figure 1)
In a real conservation planning case study, the important contribution that expert knowledge and data can make to the outcomes of spatial conservation prioritization
Summary
Systematic conservation planning provides a framework for selecting locations to efficiently achieve conservation goals using ecological and socioeconomic information for a region (Margules & Pressey, 2000). The approach has spurred the development of spatial prioritization tools for identifying priority areas for conservation actions (e.g., Zonation, Marxan) (Kukkala & Moilanen, 2013), and is being increasingly employed with the growing availability of biodiversity data and progress of analytical approaches (McIntosh et al, 2018). Conceived in the context of reserve design to achieve more representative networks of protected areas, spatial prioritization is being applied to a broad range of conservation problems, including targeting management actions (Cattarino et al, 2018; Maggini et al, 2013), development planning (Kiesecker, Copeland, Pocewicz, & McKenney, 2010; Whitehead, Kujala, & Wintle, 2017), and biodiversity offset design (Kujala, Whitehead, Morris, & Wintle, 2015). Suboptimal or inaccurate spatial solutions have the potential to result in inefficient conservation resource use or unexpected biodiversity
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