title: Rapid Assessment of Ecosystem Service Co-Benefits of Biodiversity Priority Areas in Madagascar.
abstract: The importance of ecosystems for supporting human well-being is increasingly recognized by both the conservation and development sectors. Our ability to conserve ecosystems that people rely on is often limited by a lack of spatially explicit data on the location and distribution of ecosystem services (ES), the benefits provided by nature to people. Thus there is a need to map ES to guide conservation investments, to ensure these co-benefits are maintained. To target conservation investments most effectively, ES assessments must be rigorous enough to support conservation planning, rapid enough to respond to decision-making timelines, and often must rely on existing data. We developed a framework for rapid spatial assessment of ES that relies on expert and stakeholder consultation, available data, and spatial analyses in order to rapidly identify sites providing multiple benefits. We applied the framework in Madagascar, a country with globally significant biodiversity and a high level of human dependence on ecosystems. Our objective was to identify the ES co-benefits of biodiversity priority areas in order to guide the investment strategy of a global conservation fund. We assessed key provisioning (fisheries, hunting and non-timber forest products, and water for domestic use, agriculture, and hydropower), regulating (climate mitigation, flood risk reduction and coastal protection), and cultural (nature tourism) ES. We also conducted multi-criteria analyses to identify sites providing multiple benefits. While our approach has limitations, including the reliance on proximity-based indicators for several ES, the results were useful for targeting conservation investments by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF). Because our approach relies on available data, standardized methods for linking ES provision to ES use, and expert validation, it has the potential to quickly guide conservation planning and investment decisions in other data-poor regions.
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Rachel A
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0647-0516
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Neugarten
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Miroslav
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Honzák
authors.affiliation: Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Carret
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kellee
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Koenig
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
authors.forename: Luciano
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Andriamaro
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Carlos Andres
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Cano
authors.affiliation: Wildlife Conservation Society, Byron Bay, Australia.
authors.forename: Hedley S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Grantham
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hole
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Juhn
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.|Vulcan, Inc. Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors.forename: Madeleine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McKinnon
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
authors.forename: Andriambolantsoa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rasolohery
authors.affiliation: Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Steininger
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Timothy Max
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.affiliation: Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Will R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Turner
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D003657:Decision Making; D017753:Ecosystem; D005398:Fisheries; D065928:Forests; D006801:Humans; D008270:Madagascar