The time has come to do some more research on my thesis, which deals with identifying conservation priorities in the Galapagos Islands.
http://www.galapagostours.net/images/galapagos-map.jpg
The field of identifying conservation priorities is known as
conservation prioritization, and can be defined as “the process of using
spatial analysis of quantitative data to identify locations for conservation
investment”,
which isn’t applied only to protected areas, but can also pertain to management
strategies and conservation activities outside them. One of the more important
considerations in conservation prioritization is that of comprehensiveness, by
which the ideal conservation area should contain the composition, structure and
function representative of the biodiversity feature. The complementarity
principle should also be considered, since it states that costs should be
optimized while ensuring that all biodiversity features receive benefit;
furthermore, prioritization should be designed for the long term, with
considerations for cost-effectiveness and taking into account threats that
biodiversity faces.
The prioritization is a socio-political process, in which the goals are determined
by societal considerations, but one in which science is the key provider of
technical information and options. Even though mapping of the relevant factors
is in itself an important aspect of this process, it should not focus solely on
this tool in order to design a successful conservation strategy, but also
include stakeholders opinions, development of scenarios, of decision support
systems, social marketing, facilitation and conflict resolution, institutional
establishment, monitoring and management, to name a few. The scope of the
current work, however, only includes the production of the prioritization map
due to technical, political and economic restraints.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01692/galapagos_1692336c.jpg
The identification of conservation goals is the initial phase of the
process, followed by identifying the variables (factors or system attributes)
to be considered, which is a scientific and technical stage involving the
understanding and describing of the dynamic relations that define the ecology
of a system. The next phase requires the gathering of information of the
previously defined factors, which should principally be spatial information; in
the absence of georeferenced data, carefully selected proxies can be used. The final
and critical phase is to perform the prioritization analysis itself by means of
one of the two basic principles: scoring of factors or complementarity based
approach.
A
variety of software has been designed with the purpose of aiding in the process
of conservation prioritization analysis, such as MARXAN, Zonation, C-Plan,
Res-Net, and this current work will use one such tool (Environmental Risk
Surface, ERS) in order to determine priority conservation areas in the
Galapagos Islands. Literature
pertaining to the ERS software is extremely limited, therefore the main basis
for this investigation is the work of McPherson et al. (2008) and Lessmann et
al. (2014), both assessing human impact on conservation. McPherson et al. use
GIS tools to assign weight and distance of influence to several human
activities and map its impacts, in order to identify optimal conservation areas
in Jamaica. Lessmann et al., on the other hand, use GIS map the distribution of
target species, include conservation feasibility costs, in order to identify
conservation gaps in Ecuador. Both articles focus on conservation efforts while
evaluating and mapping the effect of such human influences as population,
roads, tourism, agriculture, mining, and will thus offer guidance in the
judgment of their impact.
References
Ferrier, S., & Wintle, B. A. (2009). Quantitative
approaches to spatial conservation prioritization : matching the solution to
the need. In Spatial Conservation Prioritization. Quantitative Methods and
Computational Tools (p. 328). New York: Oxford University Press.
Knight, A. T., Cowling, R. M., Possingham, H., &
Wilson, K. A. (2009). From theory to practice: designing and situating spatial
prioritization approaches to better implement conservation action. In Spatial
Conservation Prioritization. Quantitative Methods and Computational Tools (p.
328). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lessmann, J., Muñoz, J., & Bonaccorso, E. (2014).
Maximizing species conservation in continental Ecuador: a case of systematic
conservation planning for biodiverse regions. Ecology and Evolution, n/a–n/a.
doi:10.1002/ece3.1102
McPherson, M., Schill, S., Raber, G., John, K., Zenny,
N., Thurlow, K., & Sutton, H. (2008). GIS-based Modeling of Environmental
Risk Surfaces (ERS) for conservation planning in Jamaica. Journal of Conservation
Planning, 4, 60–89.
