Comparing abundance distributions and range maps in spatial conservation planning for migratory species

Abstract

Most spatial conservation planning for wide‐ranging or migratory species is constrained by poor knowledge of species’ spatiotemporal dynamics and is only based on static species’ ranges. However, species have substantial variation in abundance across their range and migratory species have important spatiotemporal population dynamics. With growing ecological data and advancing analytics, both of these can be estimated and incorporated into spatial conservation planning. However, there is limited information on the degree to which including this information affects conservation planning. We compared the performance of systematic conservation prioritizations for different scenarios based on varying the input species’ distributions by ecological metric (abundance distributions versus range maps) and temporal sampling resolution (weekly, monthly, or quarterly). We used the example of a community of 41 species of migratory shorebirds that breed in North America, and we used eBird data to produce weekly estimates of species’ abundances and ranges. Abundance distributions at a monthly or weekly resolution led to prioritizations that most efficiently protected species throughout the full annual cycle. Conversely, spatial prioritizations based on species’ ranges required more sites and left most species insufficiently protected for at least part of their annual cycle. Prioritizations with only quarterly species ranges were very inefficient as they needed to target 40% of species’ ranges to include 10% of populations. We highlight the high value of abundance information for spatial conservation planning, which leads to more efficient and effective spatial prioritization for conservation. Overall, we provide evidence that spatial conservation planning for wide‐ranging migratory species is most robust and efficient when informed by species’ abundance information from the full annual cycle.

Diverse patterns of migratory timing, site use, and site fidelity by Alaska‐breeding Whimbrels

“…Some species, for example, Marsh Harriers ( Circus aeruginosus , Vardanis et al 2011), may visit different sites when moving between consistently used breeding and non‐breeding locations across multiple migrations, whereas others, for example, Hudsonian Godwits ( Limosa haemastica , Senner et al 2014), use the same stopover sites each year. Understanding the ways in which species consistently use some sites and sporadically use others not only provides meaningful insights into migration ecology for instance, ontogeny of migratory patterns (Mueller et al 2013, Verhoeven et al 2018) and intraspecific variation in migratory patterns (Battley et al 2012, Senner 2012), but such information also has value for implementing effective conservation actions (Martin et al 2007, Runge et al 2015, Reynolds et al 2017, Johnston et al 2019).…”

Integrating dynamic processes into waterfowl conservation prioritization tools

“…Alternatively, natural disturbances can increase the overall habitat needed to support viable populations (Allison et al., 2003). Highly mobile species pose additional challenges for conservation planners, because their natural intra‐ and inter‐annual movements also require consideration (Gilmore et al., 2007; Johnston et al., 2020; Runge et al., 2014; Schuster et al., 2019).…”

The impact of climate change induced alterations of streamflow and stream temperature on the distribution of riparian species

“…Habitat suitability modeling that considers the dynamic trends of species distributions improved habitat prioritization for conservation planning [64]. We found that considering temporally specific environmental drivers also produced different results from the model that used long-term averages as predictor variables.…”