title: Conservation Planning for Offsetting the Impacts of Development: A Case Study of Biodiversity and Renewable Energy in the Mojave Desert.
abstract: Balancing society's competing needs of development and conservation requires careful consideration of tradeoffs. Renewable energy development and biodiversity conservation are often considered beneficial environmental goals. The direct footprint and disturbance of renewable energy, however, can displace species' habitat and negatively impact populations and natural communities if sited without ecological consideration. Offsets have emerged as a potentially useful tool to mitigate residual impacts after trying to avoid, minimize, or restore affected sites. Yet the problem of efficiently designing a set of offset sites becomes increasingly complex where many species or many sites are involved. Spatial conservation prioritization tools are designed to handle this problem, but have seen little application to offset siting and analysis. To address this need we designed an offset siting support tool for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) of California, and present a case study of hypothetical impacts from solar development in the Western Mojave subsection. We compare two offset scenarios designed to mitigate a hypothetical 15,331 ha derived from proposed utility-scale solar energy development (USSED) projects. The first scenario prioritizes offsets based precisely on impacted features, while the second scenario offsets impacts to maximize biodiversity conservation gains in the region. The two methods only agree on 28% of their prioritized sites and differ in meeting species-specific offset goals. Differences between the two scenarios highlight the importance of clearly specifying choices and priorities for offset siting and mitigation in general. Similarly, the effects of background climate and land use change may lessen the durability or effectiveness of offsets if not considered. Our offset siting support tool was designed specifically for the DRECP area, but with minor code modification could work well in other offset analyses, and could provide continuing support for a potentially innovative mitigation solution to environmental impacts.
authors.affiliation: Western Geographic Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Boise, ID, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kreitler
authors.affiliation: Contractor to the Western Geographic Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Boise, ID, United States of America.
authors.forename: Carrie A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Schloss
authors.affiliation: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Soong
authors.affiliation: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States of America; The Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science and Oceans, Conservation International, Arlington, VA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Lee
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hannah
authors.affiliation: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Frank W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Davis
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D002140:California; D003246:Conservation of Energy Resources / Q000379:methods*; D003889:Desert Climate; D017753:Ecosystem; D012993:Solar Energy