title: Spatial conservation planning framework for assessing conservation opportunities in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil.
abstract: Historic rates of habitat change and growing exploitation of natural resources threaten avian biodiversity in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot. We implemented a twostage framework for conservation planning in the Atlantic Forest. First, we used ecological niche modeling to predict the distributions of 23 endemic bird species using 19 climatic metrics and 12 spectral and radar remote sensing metrics. Second, we utilized the principle of complementarity to prioritize new sites to augment the Atlantic Forest's existing reserves. The best predictors of bird distributions were precipitation metrics (the seasonality of rainfall) and radar remote sensing metrics (QSCAT). The existing protected areas do not include 10% of the habitat of each of the 23 endemic species. We propose a more economical set of protected areas by reducing the extent to which new sites duplicate the biodiversity content of existing protected areas. There is a high concordance between the proposed conservation areas that we designed using computerized algorithms and Important Bird Areas prioritized by BirdLife International. Insofar as deforestation in the Atlantic Forest is similar to land conversion in other biodiversity hotspots, our methodology is applicable to conservation efforts elsewhere in the world.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Center for Tropical Research, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Ana Paula
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Giorgi
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Corey
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rovzar
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Kelsey S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.affiliation: Center for Tropical Research, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Trevon
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fuller
authors.affiliation: School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Buermann
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
authors.forename: Sassan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saatchi
authors.affiliation: Center for Tropical Research, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de São Paulo, Piracicaba, SP 13418-900, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luis Fabio
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Silveira
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Gillespie
keywords: Brazil; Ecological niche models; Endemic birds; Environmental management; Protected areas; Radar