For the recent AARES conference in Adelaide, Maksym Polyakov did a wonderfully creative poster presenting our research on optimal targeting of ecological restoration.

There is a small image of the poster below, but if you want to see the details, go here. (Scroll down when you get there to see the poster.)

Not surprisingly, it won the prize for the best poster at the conference.

Abstract

The primary causes of biodiversity decline worldwide are habitat destruction, alteration and fragmentation resulting from human economic activities such as agriculture or property development. Public- and private-sector organizations allocate considerable resources to slow down biodiversity decline by developing conservation networks that preserve the remaining habitat. In this study we use simulation to compare several strategies to spatially target ecological restoration effort to create conservation networks, on private lands in a fragmented agricultural landscape. The evaluated targeting strategies are aggregation, connectivity and representativeness. The effectiveness of these targeting strategies is compared to the effectiveness of ecological restoration without targeting. We allow for heterogeneity of landowners’ willingness to participate in restoration projects and explicitly assume that that not all parcels within target areas will be restored. We model the probability of participation in restoration projects as a function of the private benefits of ecological restoration captured by the landowner. The results of the simulation are analyzed using regression analysis. Our results suggest that effectiveness of the targeting strategies depends on landscape characteristics (level of fragmentation) and species characteristics (habitat requirements and area of home range). On average, when uncertainty about whether landowners will participate is considered, for most analyzed species, the aggregation strategy outperforms the connectivity strategy with the representativeness strategy performing worst. This is contrary to the findings of previous studies and Government policy, that connectivity is the most effective strategy in fragmented landscapes. Accounting for the landowners’ behavior through a private benefits function improves the biodiversity outcome for most species.