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Developing a decision-support process for landscape conservation design

August 6, 2019

Planning for sustainable landscapes is hampered by uncertainty in how species will respond to conservation actions amidst impacts from landscape and climate change. Planning decisions, including tradeoffs among competing species objectives, are complex. We developed a decision-support framework that integrates dynamic-landscape metapopulation models (DLMPs) and structured decision making (SDM) to help guide landscape conservation design. With this framework, we demonstrated that planning for viable populations across broad scales can be achieved under global change. Furthermore, the integration of DLMPs with SDM enabled decisions to be more objective and transparent, and thus, more defensible.

Publication Year 2019
Title Developing a decision-support process for landscape conservation design
Authors Thomas W. Bonnot, D. Todd Jones-Farrand, Frank R. Thompson III, Joshua J. Millspaugh, Jane A. Fitzgerald, Nate Muenks, Phillip Hanberry, Esther Stroh, Larry Heggemann, Allison Fowler, Mark Howery, Shea Hammond, Kristine Evans
Publication Type Report
Publication Subtype Other Government Series
Index ID 70204613
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Columbia Environmental Research Center