Operationalizing biodiversity for conservation planning

Area of Science:

• Conservation Biology
• Ecology
• Environmental Planning

Background:

• Biodiversity's broad definition complicates conservation planning.
• Effective conservation requires prioritizing specific geographic locations for action.
• Measuring spatial variation in biodiversity is crucial for prioritization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the challenge of defining biodiversity precisely for conservation policy.
• To introduce and evaluate complementarity as a suitable measure for prioritizing conservation sites.
• To differentiate between true and estimator biodiversity surrogates.

Main Methods:

• Distinguishing between true and estimator biodiversity surrogates.
• Analyzing the limitations of traditional surrogates like species richness.
• Defining and applying the concept of complementarity for spatial prioritization.

Main Results:

• Species richness fails to capture essential compositional differences between locations.
• Complementarity explicitly measures the differences in biodiversity between places.
• A relative measure of biodiversity, like complementarity, provides the necessary precision for conservation planning.

Conclusions:

• Complementarity offers a precise and effective method for prioritizing areas for biodiversity conservation.
• Moving beyond simple species richness is vital for understanding and conserving biodiversity patterns.
• A relative, place-based approach to biodiversity measurement is key for policy and planning.