Jérôme Cimon-Morin

Site complementarity between biodiversity and ecosystem services in conservation planning of sparsely-populated regions.

The consequences of considering ecosystem services (ES) in conservation assessment are still widely debated. The degree of success depends on the extent to which biodiversity and ES can be secured under joint conservation actions. Unlike biodiversity, ES conservation is inseparably linked to human beneficiaries. Reconciling biodiversity with ES and conservation can be particularly challenging in sparsely populated areas. This study, in a sparsely-populated region of eastern Canada, focused on freshwater wetland biodiversity and ten ES provided by wetlands. Within a given maximal total area, the results showed that planning for biodiversity underrepresented local flow ES supply by 57% and demand by 61% in conservation networks. Planning for ES alone underrepresented wetland biodiversity surrogates by an average of 34%. Considering both biodiversity and ES simultaneously, all of the biodiversity and ES targets were achieved with only a 6% mean increase in area. Achieving all conservation targets starting from a network that was primarily built for either ES or biodiversity features alone was two to five times less efficient than considering both ES and biodiversity simultaneously in conservation assessment. A better framework is required to translate these spatial synergies into effective joint conservation actions.

Setting conservation priorities in cities: approaches, targets and planning units adapted to wetland biodiversity and ecosystem services

ContextProtecting wetlands in cities is challenging. A cost-effective spatial prioritization approach taking into account stakeholder motivations is needed to identify wetlands of conservation interest.ObjectivesThis study aims to optimize the efficiency of a systematic conservation planning (SCP) approach to protect nine urban wetland ecosystem services (ES) and biodiversity.MethodsFirst, we mapped ES supply and demand to capture their spatial variation as they occur at the wetland scale. Secondly, using wetland property value as cost data, we compared the efficiency of SCP to two multicriteria scoring approaches. Thirdly, we compared SCP alternatives by changing the planning unit scale and conservation objectives (i.e. emphasizing ES demand and focusing on the most important ES).ResultsThe total cost of the scoring approach networks was minimally 13 times higher, when compared to the SCP approaches. Consequently, the scoring approaches were at least five times less efficient than SCP per unit of network area (

Conservation Biogeography of Ecosystem Services

/m2). Decreasing the size of planning units resulted in further cost reduction, with networks that were up to 92% less costly. We also highlighted that beneficiary demand fulfillment in networks could be optimized without a loss in efficiency. Finally, SCP secured nine ES for the same expenditure as that required to protect four public safety related ES. However, planning solely for these four important ES failed to represent those of other ES.ConclusionsOur results may provide a tool to better inform land use decision planning in order to mitigate the impacts of urban growth on ES.

Fostering synergies between ecosystem services and biodiversity in conservation planning : a review

The global status of most ecosystem services (ES) is currently precarious, and conservation actions could help secure their supply in critical locations. There is a growing need to develop strategies for spatial prioritization in ES conservation planning, to enable identification of and attention to locations where resource investment will yield the greatest return for human well-being. Particular considerations are required to capture the spatial link between human beneficiaries and ES flows. We present a framework for identifying priority areas for ES conservation that is primarily based on assessment of their supply, demand, threats and costs.