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Assessing protected area effectiveness using surrounding (buffer) areas environmentally similar to the target area
1Instituto de Geografía, UNAM, Unidad Foránea Morelia, Aquiles Serdán, 382, Colonia Centro, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. jfmas@igiris.igeograf.unam.mx
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
|June 15, 2005
Summary
Protected areas in Mexico often have different environmental conditions than their surroundings, skewing conservation effectiveness assessments. A new method creates comparable buffer zones, revealing the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is effective, but less so than previously thought.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Conservation Biology
- Spatial Analysis
Background:
- Many conservation studies assume protected areas and their surrounding buffer zones share similar environmental conditions for comparative analysis.
- This assumption is often violated, as demonstrated by significant environmental heterogeneity between protected areas and their surroundings in Mexico.
- Such heterogeneity can bias assessments of conservation strategy effectiveness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a novel method for generating buffer areas with environmental conditions comparable to a study site.
- To critically evaluate the effectiveness of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve using this new methodology.
- To highlight the limitations of traditional buffer zone comparisons in conservation assessments.
Main Methods:
- Developed a simple method to create a buffer area that matches the environmental variables of a protected area.
- Applied this method to assess the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southeastern Mexico.
- Compared deforestation rates within the reserve, a standard distance-based buffer, and the newly generated environmentally similar buffer.
Main Results:
- The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve showed an annual deforestation rate of 0.3%.
- A standard buffer area exhibited a 1.3% annual deforestation rate.
- The environmentally similar buffer area had a 0.6% annual deforestation rate.
Conclusions:
- The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is effective in reducing land clearing.
- Comparison with a standard buffer area overestimates the reserve's conservation effectiveness.
- The developed method provides a more accurate assessment of protected area efficacy by accounting for environmental heterogeneity.