Chauvenet, ALM, Kuempel, CD, McGowan, J et al. (2 more authors) (2017) Methods for calculating Protection Equality for conservation planning. PLoS ONE, 12 (2). e0171591. ISSN 1932-6203
Abstract
Protected Areas (PAs) are a central part of biodiversity conservation strategies around the world. Today, PAs cover c15% of the Earth’s land mass and c3% of the global oceans. These numbers are expected to grow rapidly to meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Biodiversity target 11, which aims to see 17% and 10% of terrestrial and marine biomes protected, respectively, by 2020. This target also requires countries to ensure that PAs protect an “ecologically representative” sample of their biodiversity. At present, there is no clear definition of what desirable ecological representation looks like, or guidelines of how to standardize its assessment as the PA estate grows. We propose a systematic approach to measure ecological representation in PA networks using the Protection Equality (PE) metric, which measures how equally ecological features, such as habitats, within a country’s borders are protected. Extending research in Barr et al. (2011), we present an R package and two Protection Equality (PE) measures; proportional to area PE, and fixed area PE, which measure the representativeness of a country’s PA network. We illustrate the PE metrics with two case studies: coral reef protection across countries and ecoregions in the Coral Triangle, and representation of ecoregions of six of the largest countries in the world. Our results provide repeatable transparency to the issue of representation in PA networks and provide a starting point for further discussion, evaluation and testing of representation metrics. They also highlight clear shortcomings in current PA networks, particularly where they are biased towards certain assemblage types or habitats. Our proposed metrics should be used to report on measuring progress towards the representation component of Aichi Target 11. The PE metrics can be used to measure the representation of any kind of ecological feature including: species, ecoregions, processes or habitats.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 Chauvenet et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Mar 2017 10:50 |
Last Modified: | 05 Oct 2017 16:18 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171591 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Public Library of Science |
Identification Number: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0171591 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:113110 |