Aligning Conservation Priorities Across Taxa in Madagascar with High-Resolution Planning Tools

Abstract

Globally, priority areas for biodiversity are relatively well known, yet few detailed plans exist to direct conservation action within them, despite urgent need. Madagascar, like other globally recognized biodiversity hot spots, has complex spatial patterns of endemism that differ among taxonomic groups, creating challenges for the selection of within-country priorities. We show, in an analysis of wide taxonomic and geographic breadth and high spatial resolution, that multitaxonomic rather than single-taxon approaches are critical for identifying areas likely to promote the persistence of most species. Our conservation prioritization, facilitated by newly available techniques, identifies optimal expansion sites for the Madagascar government's current goal of tripling the land area under protection. Our findings further suggest that high-resolution multitaxonomic approaches to prioritization may be necessary to ensure protection for biodiversity in other global hot spots.

Optimizing resiliency of reserve networks to climate change: multispecies conservation planning in the Pacific Northwest, USA

“…Highest ranked cells include the highest densities (local occurrence levels) of the species with highest weights. The mathematical details and principles of core-area ZONATION are described in Moilanen et al (2005) and Moilanen (2007), and in the ZONATION user manual (Moilanen & Kujala, 2008); illustrative regionalscale examples of the use of core-area ZONATION include Leathwick et al (2008) and Kremen et al (2008).…”

“…We then limited analysis to the owl and the 130 localized species with 10 or more records remaining after thinning ( Fig. 2) (Kremen et al, 2008;Wisz et al, 2008). The 130 localized species comprised 75 fungi, 21 lichen, 10 bryophytes, eight vascular plants, 12 mollusks, two amphibians, a mammal, and a bird (Table S1).…”

“…This increases the challenges to evaluating the effectiveness of such reserves under climate change as species' habitat migrates to nonreserved areas (Araú jo et al, 2004). Recent efforts have combined new robust habitat modeling methods for presence-only data (MAXENT; Phillips et al, 2006;Phillips & Dudik, 2008) with reserve selection software adapted to process the large numbers of resultant habitat suitability surfaces (ZONATION; Moilanen et al, 2005;Moilanen & Kujala, 2008) to identify reserve systems that optimize habitat quality and connectivity for many species across large regions Correspondence: Carlos Carroll, e-mail: carlos@klamathconservat ion.org Global Change Biology (2010Biology ( ) 16, 891-904, doi: 10.1111Biology ( /j.1365Biology ( -2486Biology ( .2009 r 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd (Kremen et al, 2008;Leathwick et al, 2008;Thomson et al, 2009). Here we extend this approach to design reserve networks that are resilient to climate change and balance goals for wide-ranging focal species and a broad suite of localized endemics.…”

Pre-emptive National Monitoring Plan for Detecting the Amphibian Chytrid Fungus in Madagascar

“…Baseline data was obtained from former Bd surveys Rabemananjara et al 2011). The selection of sites was influenced significantly by the predicted distribution of Bd that overlaps with areas of highest amphibian species richness (Andreone et al 2005) and those identified as in situ conservation priorities for amphibians (Kremen et al 2008).…”

Local patterns of diversity in California northern coastal scrub

“…The 35 designated global biodiversity hotspots cover only 17.3% of earth's land surface, yet contain over 50% of the world's plant species as endemics (Mittermeier et al., 2011; Williams et al., 2011). Within these priority areas, however, smaller‐scale patterns of richness and endemism often are less well understood (Kremen et al., 2008). This represents a significant conservation knowledge gap because many land use decisions are made at the local scale by regional governments, agencies, and private landholders.…”