Recently adopted global marine protection targets aim to protect 10-30% of marine habitats within the next 3 to 5 years. However, these targets were adopted without prior assessment of their attainability. Moreover, our ability to monitor progress towards such targets has been constrained by a lack of robust data on marine protected areas (MPAs). In this thesis I present the results of the first explicitly marine-focused, global assessment of MPAs in relation to three global marine protection targets. Approximately 2.35 million km2, equivalent to 0.65% of the world’s oceans, are currently protected, and only 12% of that is ‘no-take’. Over the last two decades, the marine area protected globally has grown at ~5% per year. At this rate, even the most modest target is unlikely to be met for at least several decades. The utility of large-scale conservation targets has been repeatedly questioned, although mainly on ecological grounds. However, if, as is suggested here, their primary role is to motivate behavioural change, then a more serious problem is that they seem to be failing in this regard, too. I explore possible reasons for this and suggest two main problems: firstly, an as yet unmet need to develop a hierarchical system of targets that reflects the multi-scale and pluralistic nature of ecological and political systems; and secondly, feedback mechanisms between political will, perceived attainability, and target formulation which may impede implementation of the targets. Since the adoption of the global targets, no implementation strategy has been developed, which may also impede target attainment. In order to fill this gap, I applied a rarity-complementarity heuristic place prioritisation algorithm (PPA) to a dataset consisting of 1038 global species distributions with 0.5° latitude/longitude resolution, under ten scenarios devised to reflect the global targets. This is the first time that species distribution ranges of marine species have been used in a globally synthetic way, and is by far the largest application of a PPA to date. Global priority areas for protection are identified for each scenario, which may be used to identify where regional-scale protected areas network design efforts might be focused.

According to theory, habitat selection by organisms should reflect the associated probability of survival or reproductive success. Understanding habitat selection, at multiple scales, is of interest not only from a theoretical perspective, but from an applied perspective for species conservation. Northern pintails (Anas acuta) are migratory, temperate-nesting birds that breed in greatest concentrations in the prairies of North America. Declining populations suggest that habitat loss and changing land use may have decoupled formerly reliable fitness cues from selection of suitable nest habitat. I used data from 62 waterfowl nesting study sites in prairie Canada (1997–2009), to examine whether nest survival, a primary fitness metric, at nest and habitat patch scales, was predictive of habitat selection at corresponding scales. In addition, I used systematic long-term annual pintail population monitoring data (1961–2009), and recruitment indices (juvenile:adult female ratio) from hunter harvest, to examine adaptive habitat selection among landscapes within the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR). The influences of breeding population density and landscape composition were examined at all scales. At nest and patch scales, pintail nest survival varied with nest initiation date, nest habitat, pair density, and landscape composition. Nest habitat preference reflected patterns in nest survival suggesting nest habitat preference is adaptive. Preference was generally low for habitats with low nest survival (e.g., spring-seeded cropland) and high for habitats with high nest survival (e.g., idle grassland). Differences in preference among habitats weakened at high breeding density and in landscapes with more grassland. Population-level recruitment tended to be greater when pintails settled in landscapes that were wetter than normal, contained more grassland, and were moderately variable in local elevation. Pintails were strongly associated with wetter than normal landscapes but shifted into cropland-dominated landscapes and flatter landscapes when populations were high. My results indicated that pintails express adaptive habitat associations with density-dependence acting through buffer mechanisms. Finally, I use the results of the above analyses to, 1) model and map the estimated long-term average spatial abundance of pintail pairs across the PPR as a function of landscape-level covariates, and 2) construct a deterministic model predicting pintail productivity given habitat and landscape attributes. These models allow conservation efforts to be targeted to affect the most birds, and they allow estimation of the demographic response to conservation actions.

The opportunity for reducing energy expenditures in homes has never been greater nor has the need been more pressing. Based on the current analysis of weatherization programs, millions of houses do not receive energy efficiency measures and houses that are being weatherized are not receiving the kinds of measures that generate the greatest energy savings. Many of these problems are attributed to program policies, regulations and funding limitations. Given these critical issues. The creative project is a model residential energy efficiency program. Its purpose is to serve as a guide for planning, designing, developing and implementing the kinds of residential energy efficiency programs that will maximize services and benefits. More specifically, the model will assist in the design and implementation of programs that are effective, efficient and can deliver the “right” energy measures to “any” house that needs them. A community in a small Midwestern city was selected to help demonstrate the various components of the model program. / Department of Urban Planning

Historically the practice of conservation planning has occurred in an ad hoc manner in areas that have no economic or agricultural value. When systematic conservation planning has been implemented it has ensured the identification of priority areas that contain species, habitats, and processes essential to achieving conservation targets and goals set out by government. In the recent past a number of authors within the conservation planning fraternity have started questioning the actual impact of conservation plans. Only one third of the conservation plans (globally) published between 1998 and 2000 resulted in actual implementation. Prendengast et al. (1999) described this gap between conservation plans and conservation action as the ‘research–implementation–gap’. The same phenomenon is experienced in local government conservation planning, in South Africa. This has led to a lack of conservation planning and implementation. By using the Gauteng provincial Conservation Plan (C–Plan), that is considered the strategic conservation planning document for the province government, a critical evaluation of the extent to which environmental aspects are considered in strategic level municipal decision making was done. Six local and two district municipalities within the Gauteng Province were selected to ascertain, through a comparative and objective analysis, to what extent their strategic documents (Integrated Development Plan, Spatial Development Framework and Environmental Management Framework) reflect the conservation planning done on a provincial sphere (C–Plan). An analysis was done of the selected documentation and spatial maps to determine whether incorporation occurred either explicitly and/or implicitly. The expectation is that municipalities within the Gauteng Province, should, as part of their Integrated Development Plan process, integrate the Gauteng C–Plan with their Integrated Development Plans. The research found that all the municipalities fully incorporated the C–Plan within their Environmental Management Frameworks indicating that local government conservation planners do consult and incorporate provincial conservation plans when they are generating their own plans. The Spatial Development Frameworks and Integrated Development Plans did not reflect this strong connection with regards to conservation planning. There is a lack of integration between the different documents and an inability to bring a planning aspect(s) to delivery and implementation. There is no problem with the incorporation of the C–Plan into the Environmental Management Frameworks, thus future research or conservation initiatives should focus on the effective incorporation of the Environmental Management Frameworks into other strategic municipal documentation (Spatial Development Frameworks and Integrated Development Plans) and promote the integration that occurs between the municipal documents themselves. / Thesis (M. Environmental Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Historically the practice of conservation planning has occurred in an ad hoc manner in areas that have no economic or agricultural value. When systematic conservation planning has been implemented it has ensured the identification of priority areas that contain species, habitats, and processes essential to achieving conservation targets and goals set out by government. In the recent past a number of authors within the conservation planning fraternity have started questioning the actual impact of conservation plans. Only one third of the conservation plans (globally) published between 1998 and 2000 resulted in actual implementation. Prendengast et al. (1999) described this gap between conservation plans and conservation action as the ‘research–implementation–gap’. The same phenomenon is experienced in local government conservation planning, in South Africa. This has led to a lack of conservation planning and implementation. By using the Gauteng provincial Conservation Plan (C–Plan), that is considered the strategic conservation planning document for the province government, a critical evaluation of the extent to which environmental aspects are considered in strategic level municipal decision making was done. Six local and two district municipalities within the Gauteng Province were selected to ascertain, through a comparative and objective analysis, to what extent their strategic documents (Integrated Development Plan, Spatial Development Framework and Environmental Management Framework) reflect the conservation planning done on a provincial sphere (C–Plan). An analysis was done of the selected documentation and spatial maps to determine whether incorporation occurred either explicitly and/or implicitly. The expectation is that municipalities within the Gauteng Province, should, as part of their Integrated Development Plan process, integrate the Gauteng C–Plan with their Integrated Development Plans. The research found that all the municipalities fully incorporated the C–Plan within their Environmental Management Frameworks indicating that local government conservation planners do consult and incorporate provincial conservation plans when they are generating their own plans. The Spatial Development Frameworks and Integrated Development Plans did not reflect this strong connection with regards to conservation planning. There is a lack of integration between the different documents and an inability to bring a planning aspect(s) to delivery and implementation. There is no problem with the incorporation of the C–Plan into the Environmental Management Frameworks, thus future research or conservation initiatives should focus on the effective incorporation of the Environmental Management Frameworks into other strategic municipal documentation (Spatial Development Frameworks and Integrated Development Plans) and promote the integration that occurs between the municipal documents themselves. / Thesis (M. Environmental Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Recently adopted global marine protection targets aim to protect 10-30% of marine habitats within the next 3 to 5 years. However, these targets were adopted without prior assessment of their attainability. Moreover, our ability to monitor progress towards such targets has been constrained by a lack of robust data on marine protected areas (MPAs). In this thesis I present the results of the first explicitly marine-focused, global assessment of MPAs in relation to three global marine protection targets. Approximately 2.35 million km2, equivalent to 0.65% of the world’s oceans, are currently protected, and only 12% of that is ‘no-take’. Over the last two decades, the marine area protected globally has grown at ~5% per year. At this rate, even the most modest target is unlikely to be met for at least several decades. The utility of large-scale conservation targets has been repeatedly questioned, although mainly on ecological grounds. However, if, as is suggested here, their primary role is to motivate behavioural change, then a more serious problem is that they seem to be failing in this regard, too. I explore possible reasons for this and suggest two main problems: firstly, an as yet unmet need to develop a hierarchical system of targets that reflects the multi-scale and pluralistic nature of ecological and political systems; and secondly, feedback mechanisms between political will, perceived attainability, and target formulation which may impede implementation of the targets. Since the adoption of the global targets, no implementation strategy has been developed, which may also impede target attainment. In order to fill this gap, I applied a rarity-complementarity heuristic place prioritisation algorithm (PPA) to a dataset consisting of 1038 global species distributions with 0.5° latitude/longitude resolution, under ten scenarios devised to reflect the global targets. This is the first time that species distribution ranges of marine species have been used in a globally synthetic way, and is by far the largest application of a PPA to date. Global priority areas for protection are identified for each scenario, which may be used to identify where regional-scale protected areas network design efforts might be focused. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Habitat modification alters species' capacities to track shifting climatic conditions. Broad-scale analyses that explore demographical responses to on-going climate change tend to neglect the influence of the underlying landscape pattern. However, many landscapes are fragmented by human activities, which might make dispersal for many species more challenging. Determining the extent to which landscape factors affect broad-scale distributional patterns has implications for our ability to predict realistic climate change impacts on species. Here, we constructed species-specific measurements of landscape permeability for 96 butterfly species in southern Ontario to test whether this landscape characteristic affected species' distributions at macroecological scales. We used multiple logistic regression models to test for the effects of permeability and its interaction with temperature on butterfly species presence/absence. We found that 48% of butterfly species responded to landscape permeability alone or in interaction with temperature. In general, the effect was positive (87%) and species were more likely to be present with increasing landscape permeability. For 61% of the species that responded to broad-scale landscape permeability, the interaction of temperature with permeability was statistically significant. In warm areas, species were more likely to be present if landscape permeability was high. Landscape permeability explained 3-43% of residual variability in species' presences after accounting for temperature. Finally, we show how fine-scale permeability measurements can be combined with large-scale patterns of diversity to inform conservation efforts. Landscape permeability can affect species' distributions at broad-scales and understanding factors that potentially influence species' dispersal can improve predictions for how species respond to changing climatic conditions.

Red oaks (Quercus spp.; Section Erythrobalanus) produce acorns which are valuable forage for wildlife especially mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) and wood ducks (Aix sponsa). Scientists have limited information on amount, timing, and persistence of these acorns in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV). Conservation planners rely on precise estimates of acorns and other forage to estimate habitat needed by waterfowl in the MAV and other regions. My study provided premiere landscape-scale, multi-year estimates of red oak acorn yield and on-ground abundance in the MAV. Mean yield of acorns was 534 kg(dry)/ha (42.3 acorns/ m2) across all sites, years (falls-winters 2009-2012), and oak species. Yield varied more within years (CV = 11 - 29%) than when data were combined across years (CV = 11%). Yield was not synchronized in any year among MAV sites. However, yield usually was synchronized among species within sites suggesting local factors influenced acorn yield more than landscape-scale factors. Among sites and years, acorn abundance generally was greatest in January (sample mean = 371 kg/ha) and least in November (198 kg/ha). Acorns persisted to February only in years of above-average yield. Except for Nuttall oak (Quercus texana), acorn persistence generally was stable regardless of yield from parent trees. Nuttall oak acorn persistence increased with yield perhaps revealing an evolutionary pressure that encourages masting. Red oak acorn abundance was linearly related to percentage of red oaks in the overstory, but this relationship differed in years of above- and below-average yield. Currently, conservation planners use 166 kg/ha as a forage estimate of red oak acorns, moist-soil seeds, and aquatic macro-invertebrates in bottomland hardwood forests with 100% red oak canopy. I sampled at 5 sites throughout the MAV over 3 years; therefore, I recommend conservation planners consider adopting my predicted estimate of 247 kg of acorns/ha of forest land with 100% red oak canopy. Because acorns persist through most winters and generally reach peak abundance in January, often concomitant with peak abundance of mallards and other ducks in the MAV, biologists and conservation planners may have undervalued the potential of bottomland hardwood forests to support ducks in mid-late winter.

This study examined the quality of Florida county government conservation planning. To assess conservation planning quality, a theoretical model of conservation planning as prescribed by the conservation science literature was first developed. A plan evaluation coding protocol was applied to local comprehensive plan Conservation Elements to determine the extent to which county-level conservation planning met the theoretical model. A high degree of variability in conservation planning quality was found. Highest quality conservation planning occurred in the Gulf coast counties of southwest Florida. Lowest conservation planning quality occurred in the Florida Panhandle counties. The quality of conservation planning of coastal counties was significantly higher than that of inland counties. Significant regional differences were also found, where conservation planning quality in South Florida counties was significantly higher than conservation planning quality in Panhandle counties. Geographic differences in conservation planning quality were likely attributable to significant differences in socioeconomic variables among counties, including differences in education, wealth, and urbanization. Multiple regression analysis using an information theoretic approach was employed to develop a predictive model of conservation planning quality of Florida local governments. The two most plausible predictors in the model were education level of the public and total resources. Local and global spatial autocorrelation analysis were next applied to county conservation planning scores to investigate spatial patterns of conservation planning quality, which were found to be related to the policy process of diffusion. Lastly, current local government conservation planning policy was analyzed for effectiveness and policy recommendations were made. Improving the iii effectiveness of local conservation planning will require changes in statutory provisions of the state Florida Forever and Growth Management statutes. It will also require a greater commitment on the part of the state of Florida to protect the state’s biological resources over the long term

Place-based biological conservation planning and recovery delineates “places” – spatial extents with favourable conditions for the recovery and management of multiple species simultaneously. Places represent geographic areas where constituent species are more likely to benefit from a specific set of recovery and management actions. Currently, place-based conservation planning is focused on prioritizing already-identified places. Findlay and McKee (2016) propose an approach to identify and delineate places by grouping geographical units based on species-at-risk (SAR) co-localization in (a) geographical, and (b) threat space. The following research is a practical application of the Findlay-McKee Methodology (FMM), using southern Ontario as a case study. I develop a parameterized algorithm to operationalize the design principles laid out in the FMM. I first define metrics to characterize the variation in SAR overlap and the degree to which sets of SAR share common threats. Next, I explore how the spatial extent of places (place size) changes as a function of tolerance for dissimilarity in both measures. The case study allowed me to evaluate the benefits and limitations of the FMM. I conclude that the FMM has the potential to be a defensible method for characterizing places based on SAR community overlap and inter-species threat similarity. However, the FMM’s applicability is limited by the availability of datasets at an appropriate resolution for analysis; uncertainty in selecting appropriate thresholds of tolerance for dissimilarity; and the criteria used to designate seed planning units. Given the increasing popularity of multi-species and ecosystem level recovery and conservation management, developing an efficient and effective process to guide place selection is crucially important. I recommend further research focus on empirically determining the number of places in a planning region and identifying at what tolerance thresholds places lose their ability to delineate areas where a comparatively small number of recovery actions will confer widespread benefits.