Reducing risk in reserve selection using Modern Portfolio Theory: Coastal planning under sea-level rise

Abstract

Climate change is expected to impact many species and ecosystem services, although it is difficult to predict when and how these impacts may arise. Due to this uncertainty, it is difficult to plan management actions, such as designating protected areas, intended to adapt to climate change impacts. The danger of ignoring uncertainty is that resulting plans may fail to achieve conservation objectives, yet this is not usually incorporated in conservation planning. Recent studies have accounted for uncertainty by applying Modern Portfolio Theory—an approach for risk-sensitive resource allocation used in the finance sector—to conservation planning. However, these approaches are not directly appli..