Abstract
ABSTRACTIn land planning strategies, methods to quantify ecosystem services (ESs) are now used to complement biodiversity assessments. Tension arises when areas important for biodiversity do not spatially co-occur with important areas for ESs. We investigate the effectiveness of protected areas in simultaneously protecting biodiversity and ESs in central Colombia and identify complementary areas. We map, integrate using a multi-criteria technique and correlate five indicators (sensitive species, ecological systems, habitat quality, scenic beauty and water provision). Reflecting the uncertainty in criteria weights, multiple maps were created and overlain with current protected areas to investigate their effectiveness. A consensus and an uncertainty map were calculated to identify multifunctional areas (high value for biodiversity and high provision of ESs and low uncertainty). Protected areas show low to intermediate levels of effectiveness (3–56% percentage overlap with simulated areas), with water provision being the service least effectively protected. Indicators do not show high levels of correlation (all p < 0.57). Sensitive species are negatively correlated with all other indicators. High representativeness levels were found around the city of Bogotá; still, extensive multifunctional areas are not contemplated under any protection status. We advocate the use of our approach to identify multi-purpose areas that are robust to divergent stakeholder opinions.EDITED BY Berta Martin-Lopez
Highlights
Current strategies for environmental conservation have gradually changed their focus from purely biodiversity and landscape-scale management to an ecosystem services (ESs) approach (Egoh et al 2007; Chan et al 2011a; Albert et al 2014)
We investigated the effectiveness of the current network of protected areas in simultaneously protecting biodiversity and ESs in the Andean high planes of the eastern mountain ranges in Colombia, and identified potential complementary priority areas for conservation
The representativeness of currently conservation and protection areas (cCPAs) in protecting biodiversity and ESs is intermediate to low, depending on the combination of values assigned to the different criteria to define simulated Conservation and Protection Areas (sCPAs) (Figure 2), with values ranging from 3% to a maximum of 56% of overlap between sCPAs and cCPA
Summary
Current strategies for environmental conservation have gradually changed their focus from purely biodiversity and landscape-scale management to an ecosystem services (ESs) approach (Egoh et al 2007; Chan et al 2011a; Albert et al 2014). Following the CBD agreement, the incorporation of the ESs approach into the development of new environmental policies, land planning guidelines and decision making tools has been growing rapidly during the last few years This development is evidenced by the explicit integration of the ESs approach into the National Development Plan (DNP 2015), the recent release of the National Policy for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Management (MADS 2013) and the incorporation of ESs analysis in land planning procedures. In these procedures, ESs are meant to contribute to the definition of the ‘environmental conservation and protection category’ contemplated in the zonation process, for example, see the ‘Technical guide for water basin management’ (MADS 2014a).
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