Dataset Information

Conserving biodiversity efficiently: what to do, where, and when.

ABSTRACT: Conservation priority-setting schemes have not yet combined geographic priorities with a framework that can guide the allocation of funds among alternate conservation actions that address specific threats. We develop such a framework, and apply it to 17 of the world's 39 Mediterranean ecoregions. This framework offers an improvement over approaches that only focus on land purchase or species richness and do not account for threats. We discover that one could protect many more plant and vertebrate species by investing in a sequence of conservation actions targeted towards specific threats, such as invasive species control, land acquisition, and off-reserve management, than by relying solely on acquiring land for protected areas. Applying this new framework will ensure investment in actions that provide the most cost-effective outcomes for biodiversity conservation. This will help to minimise the misallocation of scarce conservation resources.

SUBMITTER: Wilson KA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1950771 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Conserving biodiversity efficiently: what to do, where, and when.

Wilson Kerrie A KA Underwood Emma C EC Morrison Scott A SA Klausmeyer Kirk R KR Murdoch William W WW Reyers Belinda B Wardell-Johnson Grant G Marquet Pablo A PA Rundel Phil W PW McBride Marissa F MF Pressey Robert L RL Bode Michael M Hoekstra Jon M JM Andelman Sandy S Looker Michael M Rondinini Carlo C Kareiva Peter P Shaw M Rebecca MR Possingham Hugh P HP

PLoS biology 20070901 9

Conservation priority-setting schemes have not yet combined geographic priorities with a framework that can guide the allocation of funds among alternate conservation actions that address specific threats. We develop such a framework, and apply it to 17 of the world's 39 Mediterranean ecoregions. This framework offers an improvement over approaches that only focus on land purchase or species richness and do not account for threats. We discover that one could protect many more plant and vertebrat ...[more]

PMID: 17713985

Similar Datasets

Project description:Global commitments to protected area expansion should prioritize opportunities to protect climate refugia and ecosystems which store high levels of irrecoverable carbon, as key components of an effective response to biodiversity loss and climate change. The United States and Canada are responsible for one-sixth of global greenhouse gas emissions but hold extensive natural ecosystems that store globally significant above- and below-ground carbon. Canada has initiated a process of protected area network expansion in concert with efforts at reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, and acknowledged nature-based solutions as a key aspect of climate change mitigation. The US, although not a party to global biodiversity conventions, has recently committed to protecting 30% of its extent by 2030 and achieving the UNFCCC Paris Agreement's mitigation targets. The opportunities afforded by these dual biodiversity conservation and climate commitments require coordinated national and regional policies to ensure that new protected areas maximize biodiversity-focused adaptation and nature-based mitigation opportunities. We address how global commitments can best inform national policy initiatives which build on existing agency mandates for regional planning and species conservation. Previous analyses of global conservation priorities under climate change have been tenuously linked to policy contexts of individual nations and have lacked information on refugia due to limitations of globally available datasets. Comparison and synthesis of predictions from a range of recently developed refugia metrics allow such data to inform planning despite substantial uncertainty arising from contrasting model assumptions and inputs. A case study for endangered species planning for old-forest-associated species in the US Pacific Northwest demonstrates how regional planning can be nested hierarchically within national biodiversity-focused adaptation and nature-based mitigation strategies which integrate refugia, connectivity, and ecosystem carbon metrics to holistically evaluate the role of different land designations and where carbon mitigation and protection of biodiversity's resilience to climate change can be aligned.

Dataset Information

Conserving biodiversity efficiently: what to do, where, and when.

Publications

Conserving biodiversity efficiently: what to do, where, and when.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets