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Principles and Procedures for Place-Based Conservation Planning for Canadian Species at Risk

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/40151
Date05 February 2020
CreatorsSullivan, Shara
ContributorsFindlay, C. Scott
PublisherUniversité d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Source SetsUniversité d’Ottawa
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatapplication/pdf

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