Multicriterion trade‐offs and synergies for spatial conservation planning

Abstract

Summary Nature conservation policies need to deliver on multiple criteria, including genetic diversity, population viability and species richness as well as ecosystem services. The challenge of integrating these may be addressed by simulation modelling. We used four models (MetaConnect, SPOMSIM, a community model and InVEST) to assess a variety of spatial habitat patterns with two levels of total habitat cover and realised at two spatial scales, exploring which landscape structures performed best according to five different conservation criteria assessed for four functional types of organisms (approximately representing trees, butterflies, small mammals and birds). The results display both synergies and trade‐offs: population size and pollination services generally benefitted more from fragmentation than did genetic heterozygosity, and species richness more than allelic richness, although the latter two varied considerably among the functional types. No single landscape performed best across all conservation criteria, but averaging over criteria and functional types, overall performance improved with greater levels of habitat cover and intermediate fragmentation (or less fragmentation in cases with lower habitat cover). Policy implications. Using four simulation models, we show that different conservation objectives must be traded off in spatial conservation planning, and that considering only a single taxon or criterion may result in suboptimal choices when planning reserve networks. Nevertheless, heterogeneous spatial patterns of habitat can provide reasonable compromises for multiple criteria.

Habitat Fragmentation Increases Overall Richness, but Not of Habitat-Dependent Species

“…Theoretical modeling is a useful way to address contested issues where field data are difficult to collect and are subject to confounding variables. To this end, simulation models have been used to study FPS, which represent individual organisms moving across simulated landscapes (Gunton et al, 2017;Rybicki et al, 2019;Thompson et al, 2019). However, these studies are conducted on binary landscapes with the space between the focal-habitat patches (the habitat type of interest), the matrix, being a single, usually highly unsuitable, habitat type.…”

Smart Sustainable Cities of the New Millennium: Towards Design for Nature

“…Standard tools might not be efficient enough to cope the entire complexity of biodiversity within a landscape [45], but they must be implemented to evaluate the costs of the conservation and the ecological functioning within a territory, in line with conservation targets set by landscape managers [46][47][48]. Once the conservation targets are clearly defined, the conservation strategy, namely, the mitigation hierarchy adopted in the urban development plan, can be properly implemented, with both optimal time and right spatial scale [19,39,49].…”

“…Copyright BIP/SCBD design with nature to design for nature (Fig. 11) is inspired by the designing practices of geodesign [16] and the Design with Nature of McHarg [14], by landscape-specific conservation planning practices [26,46,48], reserve site selection [40,41] and current target-based approaches [206,207]. The framework takes into account the three components of biodiversity, as described in Noss [208]:…”

Butterfly Conservation in China: From Science to Action

“…Quantifying population structure would benefit determining how management strategies, population histories (via monitoring data), and/or environments influence patterns of diversity [ 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 ]. Also, identifying levels and directions of gene flow and the number of private alleles in populations can provide critical information for a more effective conservation strategy in terms of increasing fitness [ 121 , 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 , 132 ]. With the advance of high throughput sequencing and non-lethal sampling technologies [ 133 , 134 , 135 , 136 , 137 ], carrying out regular monitoring of the temporal shifts in the genetic diversity of focal species is actually a cost-effective and butterfly-friendly method to accumulate large volume of data for future conservation strategies.…”