Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 22, 2026
07:10
At-Risk Butterfly Captive Propagation Programs to Enhance Life History Knowledge and Effective Ex Situ Conservation Techniques
Published on: February 11, 2020
7.6K
Spatial conservation planning under uncertainty: adapting to climate change risks using modern portfolio theory.
Mitchell J Eaton1, Simeon Yurek2, Zulqarnain Haider3
1Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, North Carolina State University, 127 David Clark Labs, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695, USA.
Summary
Climate change threatens biodiversity. This study applies Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to conservation planning, creating diverse protected areas that reduce the risk of failing conservation goals amid environmental change.
Area of Science:
- Conservation Science
- Environmental Management
- Risk Management
Background:
- Climate change and urban growth significantly impact habitats, species, and ecosystem services.
- Designing protected areas to enhance biodiversity representation and complementarity is a key adaptation strategy.
- Existing conservation planning often overlooks risk preferences and context, potentially jeopardizing conservation goals.
Purpose of the Study:
- To formalize diversification as a risk management strategy in climate-driven reserve design using Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT).
- To develop a framework for evaluating multiple conservation objectives, balancing benefits and risk, and incorporating options like parcel divestment.
- To optimize reserve portfolio design for large-scale conservation problems and evaluate trade-offs using game theory.
Main Methods:
- Application of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) principles to quantify and manage risk in reserve design.
- Development of an extended MPT framework to handle multiple objectives and decision-maker preferences.
- Utilizing an efficient search algorithm for portfolio optimization and game theory for trade-off analysis.
Main Results:
- Reserve design can be robust to risk attitude, but budget is a key factor, especially with divestment options.
- A fiscal threshold may exist where sufficient resources enable a diverse habitat portfolio, significantly lowering the risk of conservation failure.
- Optimal reserve designs are predicted to mitigate habitat and wetland losses due to sea-level rise, outperforming the current protected network.
Conclusions:
- Integrating risk management principles, like MPT, into conservation planning can enhance the resilience of protected areas to global change.
- Diversification of protected assets is crucial for managing uncertainty and achieving long-term conservation objectives.
- Strategic reserve design, considering fiscal realities and risk tolerances, is essential for safeguarding biodiversity against projected environmental changes.
Related Concept Videos
01:50Global Climate Change
28.8K
Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.
28.8K
01:57What is Conservation Biology?
24.0K
Conservation biology is a scientific field that focuses on the preservation of biodiversity in order to protect ecosystems while meeting the needs of the human population. Humans require properly functioning ecosystems to maintain our supply of natural resources, including food, medicines, and building materials.
24.0K
02:04Conservation of Small Populations
16.7K
Small population sizes put a species at extreme risk of extinction due to a lack of variation, and a consequent decrease in adaptability. This weakens the chances of survival under pressures such as climate change, competition from other species, or new diseases. Large populations are more likely to survive pressures such as these, as such populations are more likely to harbor individuals that have genetic variants that are adaptive under new stresses. Small populations are much less...
16.7K
04:08The Uncertainty Principle
31.4K
Werner Heisenberg considered the limits of how accurately one can measure properties of an electron or other microscopic particles. He determined that there is a fundamental limit to how accurately one can measure both a particle’s position and its momentum simultaneously. The more accurate the measurement of the momentum of a particle is known, the less accurate the position at that time is known and vice versa. This is what is now called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He...
31.4K
02:59The Atomic Theory of Matter
127.0K
The earliest recorded discussion of the basic structure of matter comes from ancient Greek philosophers. Leucippus and Democritus argued that all matter was composed of small, finite particles that they called atomos, meaning “indivisible.” Later, Aristotle and others came to the conclusion that matter consisted of various combinations of the four “elements” — fire, earth, air, and water — and could be infinitely divided. Interestingly, these philosophers...
127.0K
02:31Scientific Laws and Theories
87.5K
Scientific Laws
87.5K