Journal article
Spatial conservation priorities are highly sensitive to choice of biodiversity surrogates and species distribution model type
PE Lentini, BA Wintle
Ecography | Published : 2015
DOI: 10.1111/ecog.01252
Abstract
Pressure to conserve biodiversity with limited resources has led to increasing use of species distribution models (SDMs) for spatial conservation prioritization. Published spatial prioritization exercises often focus on well-studied groups, with data compiled from on-line databases of ad-hoc collections. Conservation plans generally aim to protect all components of biodiversity, and it is implied that the species used in prioritization act as surrogates. Here, we assess the sensitivity of spatial priorities to model and surrogate choice using a case study from a fragmented agricultural area of south eastern Australia that is poorly represented in the national reserve system. We model the dis..
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Awarded by ARC
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors thank the private landholders who granted access to their properties for wildlife surveys. PL also thanks Joern Fischer, Philip Gibbons, Saul Cunningham, Brad Law and Tara Martin for their supervision during the design and implementation of the wildlife surveys. Discussions with Jane Elith helped improve the manuscript, as did the comments of Subject Editor Henrique Pereira. Financial support for this project was provided by the National Environmental Research Program Environmental Decisions Hub, the Paddy Pallin Foundation, the WildCountry Science Council, and an Australian Postgraduate Award and CSIRO top-up scholarship to PL. BW is supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (FT100100819).