Beier Paul, Sutcliffe Patricia, Hjort Jan, Faith Daniel P, Pressey Robert L, Albuquerque Fabio
School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011-5018, U.S.A.
Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia.
Conserv Biol. 2015 Jun;29(3):668-79. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12509. Epub 2015 Apr 28.
Because conservation planners typically lack data on where species occur, environmental surrogates--including geophysical settings and climate types--have been used to prioritize sites within a planning area. We reviewed 622 evaluations of the effectiveness of abiotic surrogates in representing species in 19 study areas. Sites selected using abiotic surrogates represented more species than an equal number of randomly selected sites in 43% of tests (55% for plants) and on average improved on random selection of sites by about 8% (21% for plants). Environmental diversity (ED) (42% median improvement on random selection) and biotically informed clusters showed promising results and merit additional testing. We suggest 4 ways to improve performance of abiotic surrogates. First, analysts should consider a broad spectrum of candidate variables to define surrogates, including rarely used variables related to geographic separation, distance from coast, hydrology, and within-site abiotic diversity. Second, abiotic surrogates should be defined at fine thematic resolution. Third, sites (the landscape units prioritized within a planning area) should be small enough to ensure that surrogates reflect species' environments and to produce prioritizations that match the spatial resolution of conservation decisions. Fourth, if species inventories are available for some planning units, planners should define surrogates based on the abiotic variables that most influence species turnover in the planning area. Although species inventories increase the cost of using abiotic surrogates, a modest number of inventories could provide the data needed to select variables and evaluate surrogates. Additional tests of nonclimate abiotic surrogates are needed to evaluate the utility of conserving nature's stage as a strategy for conservation planning in the face of climate change.
由于保护规划者通常缺乏有关物种分布地点的数据，因此环境替代物（包括地球物理环境和气候类型）已被用于在规划区域内对地点进行优先排序。我们回顾了19个研究区域中622项关于非生物替代物在代表物种方面有效性的评估。在43%的测试中（植物为55%），使用非生物替代物选择的地点比同等数量的随机选择地点代表了更多物种，并且平均而言，在随机选择地点的基础上提高了约8%（植物为21%）。环境多样性（ED）（随机选择的中位数提高42%）和生物信息聚类显示出有前景的结果，值得进一步测试。我们提出了4种提高非生物替代物性能的方法。首先，分析人员应考虑广泛的候选变量来定义替代物，包括与地理隔离、距海岸距离、水文以及地点内非生物多样性相关的很少使用的变量。其次，应在精细的主题分辨率下定义非生物替代物。第三，地点（规划区域内优先排序的景观单元）应足够小，以确保替代物反映物种的环境，并产生与保护决策的空间分辨率相匹配的优先排序。第四，如果某些规划单元有物种清单，规划者应根据对规划区域内物种更替影响最大的非生物变量来定义替代物。虽然物种清单会增加使用非生物替代物的成本，但少量的清单可以提供选择变量和评估替代物所需的数据。需要对非气候非生物替代物进行更多测试，以评估在气候变化背景下，将自然环境作为保护规划策略进行保护的效用。
