Are Valuable and Representative Natural Habitats Sufficiently Protected? Application of Marxan model in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The joint impact of human activities and climate change on natural resources lead to biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is important to select protected areas through systematic conservation planning. The present study assessed how representative natural habitats are protected under the nature conservation network, and to identify new—but so far insufficiently—protected areas containing these habitats for sustainable management. We used the Marxan model to select the most valuable insufficiently protected natural habitats in the Czech Republic as a representative example for a conservation strategy for Central–Eastern European environments. We set three conservation targets (25%, 50%, and 75%), defining how much percent area of valuable representative natural habitats should be added to the area of the habitats already included in the Nature Protection Network. To implement these conservation targets it is necessary to preserve 22,932 ha, 72,429, ha and 124,363 ha respectively of the conservation targets occurring in the insufficiently protected areas, and 17,255 ha, 51,620 ha, and 84,993 ha respectively of the conservation features in the areas without protection status. Marxan was revealed to be an appropriate tool to select the most valuable and insufficiently protected natural habitats for sustainable management.

Toward spatially polarized human pressure? A dynamic factor analysis of ecological stability and the role of territorial gradients in Czech Republic

“…Territorial and socioeconomic contexts associated with ecological stability along specific geographical gradients were investigated over the entire territory of the Czech Republic, a Central European country extending 78,866 km 2 (Cudlín et al, 2020) and with an undulated topography (20% lowlands, 39% uplands at 300-600 m above the sea level, 30% highlands at 600-900 m above the sea level and, finally, 11% mountains at more than 900 m above the sea level). The climate regime of Czech Republic is predominantly temperate, with oceanic and continental influences that cause intense precipitation variability with recurrent droughts mainly affecting lowlands-where temperatures are generally higher and rainfall lower (Trnka et al, 2016).…”

Conservation Prioritization in a Tiger Landscape: Is Umbrella Species Enough?

“…[56]. It has been used to identify restoration and conservation sites across the globe [41][42][43][44][45]. It uses simulated annealing as the optimization method to design reserves that meet the target (or a set of criteria) at the lowest cost [57].…”

“…Conservation of these features can be carried out through spatial prioritization by setting conservation targets. Based on the availability of data and objectives, past studies have set targets for features such as natural areas, species richness and diversity, geological and topographical features, vegetation types, and ecosystem services [41][42][43][44][45]. Data availability for species and their habitat is an important challenge to this approach, which can be overcome by earth observation data, which play important roles in computing taxonomic and environmental surrogates for conservation features in areas with no or insufficient field data [46][47][48][49][50].…”

Functional Connectivity of Naturally Valuable Habitats in the Jeseníky Protected Landscape Area

“…The evaluation was conducted on the strength of a pre-prepared Detailed combined map of habitats (DCL) on a scale of 1: 10,000 for the entire CR and a related knowledge database regarding the level of loss of natural character of individual habitats. A description of the structure and content of this dataset can be found, for example, in Cudlín et al (2020) or Pechanec et al (2021). It is a detailed layer containing 194 (156 natural and 38 non-natural) habitat types, currently composed of 3,397,852 segments.…”