Improving effectiveness of systematic conservation planning with density data.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Conservation Biology
• Spatial Planning

Background:

• Systematic conservation planning designs protected area networks for biodiversity goals.
• Current methods often rely on species occurrence probability, which may not correlate with actual population densities.
• This discrepancy can impact the efficiency of conservation efforts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test if conservation networks designed using species density distributions are more efficient than those using probability of occurrence models.
• To compare the effectiveness of density versus occurrence models in conserving species populations and diversity.
• To evaluate conservation network designs for 26 land bird species in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Zonation conservation prioritization algorithm.
• Compared network designs based on species density distributions versus probability of occurrence models.
• Assessed network efficacy using predicted species densities and diversity.

Main Results:

• Density-based models protected more individuals per species in the highest priority 10-40% of the landscape.
• Occurrence-based models protected more individuals in the lowest 50% of priority areas.
• Both model types conserved species diversity similarly, with higher diversity in higher priority areas.

Conclusions:

• Density-based models are superior for identifying the most critical areas for population conservation.
• Both density and occurrence models have utility in conservation planning.
• Improved data aggregation and accessibility through ecoinformatics portals are crucial for incorporating species count data into planning.