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Integrating Human Impacts and Ecological Integrity into a Risk-Based Protocol for Conservation Planning

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Abstract

Conservation planning aims to protect biodiversity by sustainng the natural physical, chemical, and biological processes within representative ecosystems. Often data to measure these components are inadequate or unavailable. The impact of human activities on ecosystem processes complicates integrity assessments and might alter ecosystem organization at multiple spatial scales. Freshwater conservation targets, such as populations and communities, are influenced by both intrinsic aquatic properties and the surrounding landscape, and locally collected data might not accurately reflect potential impacts. We suggest that changes in five major biotic drivers—energy sources, physical habitat, flow regime, water quality, and biotic interactions—might be used as surrogates to inform conservation planners of the ecological integrity of freshwater ecosystems. Threats to freshwater systems might be evaluated based on their impact to these drivers to provide an overview of potential risk to conservation targets. We developed a risk-based protocol, the Ecological Risk Index (ERI), to identify watersheds with least/most risk to conservation targets. Our protocol combines risk-based components, specifically the frequency and severity of human-induced stressors, with biotic drivers and mappable land- and water-use data to provide a summary of relative risk to watersheds. We illustrate application of our protocol with a case study of the upper Tennessee River basin, USA. Differences in risk patterns among the major drainages in the basin reflect dominant land uses, such as mining and agriculture. A principal components analysis showed that localized, moderately severe threats accounted for most of the threat composition differences among our watersheds. We also found that the relative importance of threats is sensitive to the spatial grain of the analysis. Our case study demonstrates that the ERI is useful for evaluating the frequency and severity of ecosystemwide risk, which can inform local and regional conservation planning.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the staff of the Conservation Management Institute, especially L. Roghair and S. Klopfer, for gathering and assembling data sources. We also thank J. Guzman, J. Higgins, S. Paulsen, and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on improving the manuscript. Funding was provided by the USGS Aquatic Gap Analysis Program.

The Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is jointly sponsored by the US Geological Survey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and the Wildlife Management Institute.

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  1. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061-0321, USA

    Kimberly M. Mattson

  2. United States Geological Survey, Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit 1, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061-0321, USA

    Paul L. Angermeier

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  1. Kimberly M. Mattson
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  2. Paul L. Angermeier
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Correspondence to Kimberly M. Mattson.

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Mattson, K.M., Angermeier, P.L. Integrating Human Impacts and Ecological Integrity into a Risk-Based Protocol for Conservation Planning. Environmental Management 39, 125–138 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-005-0238-7

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