Systematic conservation planning for biodiversity conservation: Basic concepts and outline of analysis procedure

Abstract

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) provides a decision-support framework for biodiversity conservation for multistakeholder deliberation. The core concept for designing protected area (PA) networks is the CAR principle, which comprises Comprehensiveness, Adequacy, and Representativeness. This is the basis of conservation planning, involving the identification of potential biodiversity patterns within a PA network as sampled areas. Priority areas for implementing conservation targets are identified in a spatially explicit manner, based on site-selection algorithms using biodiversity features and socioeconomic cost layers. Site-selection algorithms have roots in the concept of complementarity, which is related to ecological/evolutionary distinctiveness and the spatial turnover of biodiversity features among sites. Complementarity is a conceptual attribute of siteselection algorithms used to explore the minimum-set problem. Irreplaceability constitutes an index of conservation priority, and it is informative to associate the irreplaceability score with threat/vulnerability levels among sites when using a reactive conservation approach. Spatial prioritization of the Zonation algorithm is a promising tool for defining conservation targets recursively, and enables us to prioritize ranking for minimizing biodiversity loss under socioeconomic constraints. The concept of persistence is an important one for the future development of SCP, which currently assumes static biodiversity patterns. Incorporating macroecological patterns and underlying processes into the CAR principle is critical for maintaining biogeographical potential in conservation planning.