Methods for allocation of habitat management, maintenance, restoration and offsetting, when conservation actions have uncertain consequences

Abstract

We develop methods for conservation resource allocation, to help with decisions about targeting of protection, habitat management, maintenance and restoration or biodiversity offsetting. We construct a framework, where conservation actions have different responses for different biodiversity features in different environments, and in which uncertainty in responses and the time perspective are explicitly considered. Costs of actions in different environments are also accounted for. Costs can be defined as constants, functions of time or as functions of the total area in which an action is performed. We optimize the combination of actions to maximize conservation value given uncertain responses..