Abstract

Including both economic costs and biological benefits of sites in systematic reserve selection greatly increases cost-efficiency. Nevertheless, limited funding generally forces conservation planners to choose which data to focus The most resources on; therefore, the relative importance of different types of data must be carefully assessed. We investigated the relative importance of including information about costs and benefits for 3 different commonly used conservation goals: 2 in which biological benefits were measured per site (species number and conservation value scores) and 1 in which benefits were measured on the basis of site complementarity (total species number in the reserve network). For each goal, we used site-selection models with data on benefits only, costs only, and benefits and costs together, and we compared the efficiency of each model, Costs were more important to include than benefits for the goals in which benefits were measured per site. By contrast, for the complementarity-based goal, benefits were more important to include. To understand this pattern, we compared the variability in benefits and in costs for each goal. By comparing the best and the worst possible selection of sites with regard to costs alone and benefits alone for each conservation goal, we introduced a simple and consistent variability measure that is applicable to all kinds of reserve-selection situations. In our study, benefit variability depended strongly on bow the conservation goal was formulated and was largest for the complementarity-based conservation goal. We argue that from a cost-efficiency point of view, most resources should be spent on collecting the most variable type of data for the conservation goal at band.

Keywords

conservation cost-efficiency; conservation planning; data collection; forest biodiversity; opportunity cost; reserve selection; site complementarity

Published in

Conservation Biology
2008, Volume: 22, number: 5, pages: 1331-1339
Publisher: BLACKWELL PUBLISHING

SLU Authors

• Perhans, Karin

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Kindstrand, Claes

  • Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Boman, Mattias

  • Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Djupström, Line

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Gustafsson, Lena

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Mattsson, Leif

  • Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Schroeder, Martin

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Weslien, Jan

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Wikberg, Sofie

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science
Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00976.x

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/18860