title: Fine-resolution conservation planning with limited climate-change information.
abstract: Climate-change induced uncertainties in future spatial patterns of conservation-related outcomes make it difficult to implement standard conservation-planning paradigms. A recent study translates Markowitz's risk-diversification strategy from finance to conservation settings, enabling conservation agents to use this diversification strategy for allocating conservation and restoration investments across space to minimize the risk associated with such uncertainty. However, this method is information intensive and requires a large number of forecasts of ecological outcomes associated with possible climate-change scenarios for carrying out fine-resolution conservation planning. We developed a technique for iterative, spatial portfolio analysis that can be used to allocate scarce conservation resources across a desired level of subregions in a planning landscape in the absence of a sufficient number of ecological forecasts. We applied our technique to the Prairie Pothole Region in central North America. A lack of sufficient future climate information prevented attainment of the most efficient risk-return conservation outcomes in the Prairie Pothole Region. The difference in expected conservation returns between conservation planning with limited climate-change information and full climate-change information was as large as 30% for the Prairie Pothole Region even when the most efficient iterative approach was used. However, our iterative approach allowed finer resolution portfolio allocation with limited climate-change forecasts such that the best possible risk-return combinations were obtained. With our most efficient iterative approach, the expected loss in conservation outcomes owing to limited climate-change information could be reduced by 17% relative to other iterative approaches.
authors.affiliation: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Onna-son, Okinawa, 904-0495, Japan.
authors.forename: Payal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Mindy L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Mallory
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, U.S.A.|Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C., 20036, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Amy W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Ando
authors.affiliation: Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Laurel, MD, 20708, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Glenn R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Guntenspergen
mesh_terms: D002489:Central America; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D009656:North America
keywords: diversificación; diversification; incertidumbre; manejo de recursos naturales; natural resource management; optimal reserve-site selection; optimización del portafolio; portfolio optimization; selección del sitio óptimo de reserva; uncertainty