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Ecoregional Assessments: Standard 13

By admin on 10/13/2006 | Keyword(s): Ecoregional assessments; Ecoregional assessments: Standards

Standards

Rationale

The number of places necessary to conserve biodiversity and threats to biodiveristy in those places can be considerable. Selecting priorities among them is essential for effective and efficient conservation. In setting priorities, one should consider the potential biodiversity contribution, scope and severity of threats, opportunities for success in abating types, scope and severity of threats, key enabling conditions (e.g., presence of partners and conservation capacity, leverage opportunities, conservation funding, and potential for success). Frequently multiple organizations or partners may seek to have impact on the ecoregional portfolios. Mutual agreements should be established among key conservation players in the ecoregion regarding where each will work complementarily but separately and where collaboration may occur.

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Assignment of priorities for actions among targets, threats and/or areas of biodiversity significance.
Clear, transparent, and explicit description of criteria, data types and sources, methods and tools used to define priorities.
Maps and databases of priority areas of biodiversity significance and their priority levels.
A set of institutional priorities, goals and roles for action for all key partners and stakeholders involved in conservation actions.

–Standards for Ecoregional Assessments and Biodiversity Visions (.pdf, 129 kb)

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Guidance

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Ecoregional Portfolios/Biodiversity Visions can be made up of a significant number of conservation areas that can seem overwhelming when we are charged to "conserve the whole portfolio." How do we figure out what to conserve first, or next? How should limited resources be allocated? Should resources first go to those areas that have the highest number of conservation targets? What about those places that have the last remaining population of certain species? Perhaps those places that are most threatened? Perhaps those that are least threatened? What about potential for success? How do we factor in opportunity or the potential for leveraging further action? Are the most highly leveraged opportunities always the best investments? Should we only think of places when defining priorities? What about priority strategies? Which strategies will contribute to conserving the most targets? Which will affect the most places? Which will be most leveraged? These questions have stimulated innovation to develop methods to define priorities and sequences to guide our conservation efforts.

Sequencing conservation actions, or priority setting, involves the determination of both geographic and strategic priorities. Methods for sequencing conservation actions can help managers by organizing information about conservation project [1] values, costs, and opportunities in a way that informs more rational and transparent decision-making. Sequencing tools can also help identify key conservation strategies that cut across portfolios, and inform projections about staffing and funding needs. As conservation organizations and resource management agencies around the world define priorities for their work from a broad, comprehensive vision, sequencing methods and tools will also be useful for defining programmatic goals for conservation outcomes in the ecoregions and other spatial scales where we work, and can support proposals for large conservation projects to organizational senior management and trustees.

Defining and sequencing priorities can be accomplished through:

Setting geographic priorities
Prioritizing strategies and projects
Organizing information utilizing key steps
Defining priorities for key partners

Setting Geographic Priorities
Most priorities for conservation actions are currently developed by focusing on places. This is a common, albeit a limited perspective, for setting conservation priorities. This approach is based on evaluating the attributes of places, and using combinations of those attributes to define priorities for place-based conservation actions. Groves (2003) reviews approaches and highlights many examples to identify priorities for conservation actions. Criteria that he suggests can help planners determine priorities include:

Some measure of biodiversity or conservation value (diversity, irreplaceability, number of rare and endangered species).
Threats (vulnerability, severity and urgency).
Degree to which biodiversity in areas has been conserved elsewhere (complementarity).
Quality or ecological condition.
Ability to restore a degraded area.
Feasibility or possibility to achieve conservation.
Leverage potential.

Prioritizing Strategies and Projects
In addition to geographic priorities based on the attributes of place, another critical component to priorities is informed by strategies and projects. Priority strategies and projects should have significant scope and impact to threats affecting biodiversity, and have significant impacts on many areas of biodiversity significance. These are called multi-site strategies or multi-site projects. Defining strategies and projects requires knowing the scope of threats and the potential scope of strategies to abate the threats at multiple sites. Evaluating the impact of strategies and projects on biodiversity is accomplished by analyzing the areas that would be affected by a strategy, and summarizing the targets and number of examples that would be affected by the strategy. This is almost the reverse of defining area-based priorities and then defining strategies. (For an introduction and case studies to Strategies follow this link.)

Key Steps to Organize Information
Appropriate methods for sequencing conservation actions will vary regionally depending on available information and the purposes for setting priorities. Several programs have been pioneering methods for priority setting and sequencing based on ecoregional assessments, and have tailored them to their different needs and circumstances. Priorities differ with the questions and the criteria that are used. There should not necessarily be just one way to define priorities, and organizing information to provide alternative views is important. Given the different approaches that are available and the different questions being asked, a set of general key steps are summarized below to organize information and inform the process, whether it is a place-based or strategy-based process.

Use existing GIS interactive data base developed for ecoregional assessments to organize existing data and manage new information on the attributes of areas of biodiversity significance so they can be spatially evaluated and presented. This information will include data that have been addressed in other standards such as existing levels of conservation/protection, type, scope and severity of threats, viability, ownership, and conservation target types and number. Additional information suggested above may need to be developed to better define priorities. Options for data management are provided in the Data Management standard (Standard 3).
Summarize biological contribution of each area of biodiversity significance. Develop classes to rank biological contributions using target attributes. Classes are commonly created through generating quartiles for the range of numbers of attributes listed below. The attributes that have been commonly used include:
- Number of ecological system targets
- Number of threatened and endangered, and imperiled and other "listed" species (e.g. T&E; listed, G1, G2 species, IUCN species, AZE species)
- Number of ecoregional endemic species, communities and ecological systems
- Number of species, community and ecological system targets
- Number of irreplaceable targets (only found in one area of biodiversity significance
Summarize relative viability of targets in the areas of biodiversity significance using information from the viability assessment (Standard10). Simple classes of high, medium, low, unviable, or viable/unviable are useful. This information should be used to define the relative opportunities for:
- Conserving highly ranked viability
- Improving viability
- Restoration
A threats assessment should allow a summary of types, severity and urgency of threats by areas of biodiversity significance. Spatial information on type of threat is useful to align and prioritize strategies. Severity and urgency can inform the sequencing of priorities and sequence of strategies. An assessment of vulnerability and future threats will also contribute to a prioritization effort. Standard 9 (Threats) addresses threat assessments and categories in further detail.
Conduct a GAP assessment of the conservation status of the areas of biodiversity significance and the targets already under conservation strategies. Using this information, assess the complimentarity of areas of biodiversity significance. Areas that have a high complementarity value provide targets that are not well represented by existing enabling environments, such as protected areas, stewardship and other conservation actions. There have been suggestions that coarse filter targets be the initial focus of this type of assessment, as many fine scale targets occur at only one place, and will make many areas of biodiversity significance highly complementary. Suggestions for classes include:
- High: No occurrences of targets are represented in any enabling environments
- Medium: One occurrence of a target is under an enabling environment
- Low: Two or more occurrences of targets are currently in an enabling environment

Alternative classes might include:

- High: No targets are represented in any enabling environments
- Medium: 1-50% of the targets have at least one occurrence in an enabling environment
- Low: >50% of the targets have at least one occurrence in an enabling environment
Assign a value for opportunities for leverage. Most areas should be assigned the default low value of unless there is good, persuasive information for assigning a higher ranking. This information should be gathered during the process of gathering information on opportunity. Suggestions for classes include:
- High: Clearly specified, demonstrable leverage for building partnerships, tools or funding to conserve other sites with plans and capacity in place to capitalize on this leverage
- Medium: Potential leverage to build partnerships, tools, or funding to conserve other sites
- Low: No clearly specified, demonstrable leverage
Assign a value for opportunity for success based on the existing or potential to implement strategies. This would be done through input from regional experts, partners and staff involved in implementing strategies. Suggestions for classes include:
- High = Conservancy or partners have capacity to implement strategies to abate the critical threat, and there is reasonably high probability of success, and the strategies can be implemented at reasonable costs
- Medium = uncertain capacity, or medium probability of success, or high costs
- Low = capacity unlikely to exist in 10 years, or probability of success low, or very high costs

A variety of methods and tools exist to use the information organized in the key steps above. They range from documenting expert opinion, using excel spread sheets, access databases and other interactive databases to evaluate spatial data with a GIS such as the EDMT data model, and SCAT. See the case studies and resources sections to evaluate alternative methods to identify priorities.

Defining Priorities for Key Partners
An assessment can result in a set of spatial and project priorities, but actions are facilitated by having a set of assignments for key partners. By agreeing on responsibilities for activities, partners are better coordinated in their efforts, and can hold each other accountable for their actions to conserve the biodiversity of the ecoregion.

Opportunities for Innovation

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The examples in the case studies provide a range of approaches to define geographic priorities for actions based on biological contribution, irreplaceability, integrity and threat. These criteria are biologically based. Priorities generally focus on geographies with high threat levels. Perhaps it would be easier and less expensive to work in places with low threat levels, all other things being equal? Evaluating the outcomes of applying this criterion might be informative for conservation organizations. Scope and severity of threat can also be viewed as information about the potentials for estimating costs and potentials for success. Should we focus on geographies because of the number of species, communities and ecological systems in them? Does it matter if we conserve 4 places with 10 targets each vs. one place with 40 targets (yes there are size/refuge design/isolation issues)? Defining priorities based on the potential impact of conservation strategies needs to be further developed in order to inform priorities for site-based actions.

Though a lot of work has gone into defining the criteria, little attention has been given to assessing how prioritization outcomes change with differences in approach. Are there combinations of criteria that are optimal for setting priorities? How does weighting of certain variables affect the outcome? How much are outcomes affected when criterion categories are defined differently among analyses? Sensitivity analysis can help judge the efficacy of different applications and interpretations of priority setting efforts. The stability of a prioritization can be tested by examining how sensitive the results are to changes in criteria and criteria weightings.

We have yet to apply information on costs or timeline into our assessments. Using this information may guide us to a subset of many places that collectively provide what one or two large places do, but the financial and time investments are less and the opportunities for success are higher. We need to think of providing programmatic guidance that contains biodiversity information and values, but the leverage, costs and opportunity for success are also important when thinking about limited financial resources and time. We need to continue to identify ways to make our analyses better show the potential outcome of different strategies and investment scenarios on biodiversity conservation progress.

Case Studies

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Southern Rocky Mountain Ecoregion. Defined area-based priorities considering conservation value (number of globally imperiled targets and viability), and level of threats. Information was gathered from the Natural Heritage Program, workshops and subject experts. Priorities were areas that had higher numbers of threatened targets with higher viability and higher levels of threats. Click here for related figures (.ppt, 1 MB)and spreadsheets (.xls, 107 kb).

Arizona (portions of 5 ecoregions). Defined a Biological Value Index using total # targets, global ranks, listed status, # endemic targets, taxonomic diversity, and # aquatic/riparian targets. Defined an Irreplaceability Index to evaluate uniqueness of targets in areas. Conducted multiple prioritization schemes among 499 areas and discussed different outcomes. Click here for related figures (.pdf, 301 kb) and spreadsheets (.xls, 369 kb).

Southeastern Regional Priorities. Four classes of urgency for actions were defined using level of threat and contribution to ecoregional goals. All highly threatened areas were priorities, and combinations of high levels of biological target contribution and high threats were priorities. A program was developed for data analyses. Further analyses included opportunities for conservation actions and priorities for specific strategies linked to specific threats. Click here for related figures (.ppt, 275 kb).

Prioritizing Conservation Areas in the Willamette Valley-Puget Trough-Georgia Basin. Ecoregion. Prioritization among terrestrial portfolio sites was determined by plotting conservation value against vulnerability. An Excel-based tool was developed to allow assessment of various conservation value weighting schemes. This tool also automates the reporting of results in tables, graphs and maps.

Ranking priority areas in the Northern Andes. Priority areas were ranked through an involved process that included assessing each area's importance for biodiversity, importance for ecological processes and intactness.

Prioritization Matrix in Northern High Plains. Priorities were determined from an index based on the biodiversity value of portfolio conservation areas, and the urgency of threats to the biodiversity of these areas.

Have a story to share on this topic? Download a template and submit a case study for review.

Tools

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SCAT- Sequencing conservation action tool V 6.2 and maunal (.zip, 666 kb). A Microsoft Access tool designed to prioritize conservation strategy options and identify the sequence of those actions and various geographic scales. Manual available through conserveonline.org.

EDMT data model. This data model uses the Conservation Planning Tool and a GIS to evaluate attributes of areas of biodiversity significance or entire ecoregions and develop alternative scenarios based on different questions. Areas of biodiversity significance can be evaluated for their biological attributes, contributions towards goals and types and patterns of threats. Individual targets can be evaluated as well to inform target-specific strategies and projects. Read more about the EDMT data model (.pdf, 3.2 MB).

ResNet: A software program that uses a heuristic algorithm to prioritize areas based on "biodiversity content" as indicated by target occurrences, rarity and complementarity. Aggarwal A., J. Garson, C.R. Margules, A.O. Nicholls and W. Sarkar (2000). ResNet Version 1ױ Manual (Report. Biodiversity and Biocultural Conservation Laboratory, University of Texas) available for download at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~consbio/Cons/ResNet.html

The California Legacy Project produced an analytical, data-driven, prioritization method where sites are scored based on it marginal conservation value. Prioritization depends on the resources the site contains, the threat to those resources, and the conservation cost of mitigating that threat. See Davis et al. 2003 below.

BioRap priority setting tools (software, text and case studies) Australian BioRap Consortium. A set of coordinated analytical tools including spatial modeling tools and classification and biodiversity-priority setting tools. These tools are meant to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity relying predominantly on abiotic data. Case study in Papau New Guinea available at http://www.amonline.net.au/systematics/faith5j.htm

Action Site Selection Tool (.xls, 163 kb) is an Excel based tool designed to help planners select action sites within ecoregional conservation portfolios

NatureVista DSS by NatureServe. Vista is a decision support system, or a series of tools designed to assist in land use and conservation planning. Vista incorporates biodiversity information into the planning processes allowing users to assess the biodiversity implications of alternative land use scenarios.

Resources

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Websites

Biodiversity and World Map: Assessing Conservation Priority & GAP Analysis, Can be found at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/worldmap/priority/index.html.

International Society for Multi-criteria Decision Analysis provides information about existing decision support tools at www.mit.jyu.fi/MCDM/publ.html.

Society for Ecological Restoration internet site provides extensive reading and resources pertaining to restoration at http://www.ser.org/

Publications

Aronson, J and E Le Floc'h. 1996. Vital landscape attributes: missing tools for restoration ecology. Restoration Ecology, 4: 377-387.

Davis, F.W., D.M. Stoms, et al. (2003). A framework for setting land conservation priorities using multi-criteria scoring and an optimal fund allocation strategy, University of California, Santa Barbara, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis: 72pp. (GIS based geographic and strategy prioritization tool)

Ehrenfeld J. G. 2000. Defining the limits of restoration: the need for realistic goals. Restoration Ecology 8:2-9.

Ferrier, S., R. L. Pressey, and T. W. Barrett. 2000. A new predictor of the irreplaceability of areas for achieving a conservation goal, its application to real-world planning, and a research agenda for further refining. Biological Conservation 93:303-325.

Ford K. E., Glatzel K. A., and Piro R. E. 1990. Watershed planning and restoration: achieving holism through interjurisdictional solutions. In: Environmental Restoration (ed J. J. Berger) pp. 312-320. Island Press, Washington D.C.

Groves, C.R. 2003. Safeguarding nature's investments: setting priorities for action among conservation areas. In C. Groves' Drafting a Conservation Blueprint: A Practitioner's Guide to Planning for Biodiversity. Island Press, Washington, D.C. pp.260-287.

Hargrove et al. 2002. Geography of Hope update: When and where to consider restoration in ecoregional planning (.pdf, 434 kb). The Nature Conservancy.

Hargrove, B., T. Tear and L. Landon (2002). Theoretical Constructs for Large-Scale restoration: An accompaniment to Geography of Hope Update- When and where to consider restoration in ecoregional planning (.doc, 148 kb). The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA.

Hobbs R. and Norton D. A. 1996. Towards a conceptual framework for restoration ecology. Restoration Ecology 4:93-110.

Johnson, N. C. (1995). Biodiversity in the Balance: Approaches to Setting Geographic Conservation Priorities (.pdf, 31 kb). Washington, DC, World Wildlife Fund, Biodiversity Support Programme: 13 pp. (Review of several approaches to priority setting)

Justus, J. and S. Sarkar (2002). The principle of complementarity in the design of reserve networks to conserve biodiversity: a preliminary history. Journal of Biosciences 27(4 supplement 2): 421-435. (discussion of complementarity)

Kingsford R.T., H. Dunn, D. Love, J. Nevill, J. Stein, and J. Tait (2005) Protecting Australia's rivers, wetlands and estuaries of high conservation value: a blueprint; Final consultant's report to Land and Water Australia, Canberra: Un-edited full report (.pdf, 936 kb). (includes discussion of prioritization of freshwater protected areas)

LLewellyn D. W., Shaffer G. P., Craig N. J., Creasman L., Pashley D., Swan M., and Brown C. 1996. A decision-support system for prioritizing restoration sites on the Mississippi River Alluvial Plain. Conservation Biology 10:1446-1455.

Margules, C.R. and R.L. Pressey. 2000. Systematic conservation planning. Nature. 405: 243-253. (data driven priority setting methodology)

Margules, C. R., R. L. Pressey, et al. (2002). Representing biodiversity: data and procedures for identifying priority areas for conservation. Journal of Biosciences 27(4 supplement 2): 309-326. (good overview of key concepts/terms)

Menon, S., R. G. Pontius, et al. (2001). Identifying Conservation-Priority Areas in the Tropics: a Land-Use Change Modeling Approach (.pdf, 7 MB). Conservation Biology 15(2): 501-512. (prioritization in the absence of biological data)

Murray, M. G., M. J. B. Green, et al. (1996). Biodiversity Conservation in the Tropics: Gaps in Habitat Protection and Funding Priorities, UNEP-WCMC.

Myers, N. 1979. The Sinking Ark. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press.

Noss, R.F., C. Carroll, K. Vance-Borland, and G. Wuerthner. 2002). A multicriteria assessment of the irreplaceability and vulnerability of sites in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Conservation Biology. 16: 895-908.

Poiani K., R. Meyers, J. Randall, B. Richter, and A. Steuter. 1999. Geography of Hope Update #5. Ecological processes and landscape patterns: considerations for ecoregional planning. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA.

Poiani, K. and B. Richter. 1999. Functional landscapes and the conservation of biodiversity (.pdf, 236 kb). Working papers in Conservation Science, No. 1. Conservation Science Division, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA.

Pressey, R. L. H.P Possingham, and C. R. Margules. 1996. Optimality in reserve selection algorithms: when does it matter and how much? Biological Conservation 76: 259-267.

Pressey, R. L., T. H. Hager, K. M. Ryan, J. Schwarz, S. Wall, S. Ferrier, and P. M. Creaser. 2000. Using abiotic data for conservation assessments over extensive regions: quantitative methods applied across New South Wales, Australia. Biological Conservation. 96: 55-82.

Pressey, R. L., I. R. Johnson, and P. D. Wilson. 1994. Shades of irreplaceability: towards a measure of the contribution of sites to a reservation goal. Biodiversity and Conservation 3:242-262.

Rao, M., S.V.C. Sastry, P.D. Yadar, . Kharod, S.K. Pathan, P.S. Dhiniwa, K.L. Majumdar, D. Sampat Kumar, V.N. Patkar, V.K. Phatak. 1991. A Weighted Index Model for Urban Suitability Assessment-A GIS Approach. Bombay Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, Bombay, India.

Robertson K. R., Anderson R. C., and Schwartz M. W. 1997. The tallgrass prairie mosaic. In: Conservation in Highly Fragmented Landscapes (ed M. W. Schwartz) pp. 55-87. Chapman and Hall, New York, NY.

Saaty, T.L. 1977. A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures. J. Math. Psychology. 15: 234-281.

Sarkar, S., A. Aggarwal, et al. (2002). Place prioritization for biodiversity content. Journal of Biosciences 27(4 supplement 2): 339-346. (A discussion of ResNet and examples of its use)

Sutter, Rob, Chris Szell, and John Prince. Sequencing Conservation Actions: Science-based Priorities for Ecoregional and Global Conservation. 2005. The Nature Conservancy, Southern U.S. Regional Office, Durham, NC.

Simberloff D., D.F. Doak, M. Groom, S.C. Trombulak, A.P. Dobson, S. Gatewood, E.

Soule, M. Gilpin, C. Martinez, and L.S. Mills. 1999. Regional and continental restoration. In: Continental Conservation: Scientific Foundations of Regional Reserve Networks (eds M. E. Soule and J. Terborgh) pp. 65-98. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Theobald, D.M. 2003. Targeting conservation action through assessment of protection and exurban threats. Conservation Biology. 17: 1624-1637.

Valutis, L. and R. Mullen. 2000. The Nature Conservancy's approach to prioritizing conservation actions. Environmental Science and Policy. 3:341-346.

Voogd, H. 1983. Multicriteria Evaluation for Urban and Regional Planning. Pion, Ltd., London.

Williams, P. H., J.L. Moore, et al. (2003). Integrating biodiversity priorities with conflicting socio-economic values in the Guinean-Congolian forest region. Biodiversity and Conservation 12(6): 1297-1320. (prioritization to maximize biodiversity protection while minimizing conflict over natural resource use).

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