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The effect of target extent on the location of optimal protected areas networks in Canada

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Abstract

Various jurisdictions in Canada are currently undertaking, or have recently completed, planning exercises as part of implementation and expansion of representative reserve networks (networks of provincial parks, national parks, ecological reserves, etc.). These exercises have resulted in recommendations to governments about which areas of land should be set aside as protected areas, and different levels of government have been involved in the process of land acquisition. In some cases, planning exercises have included implementation of new protected areas to complement existing reserve networks. Many of these exercises have applied principles such as complementarity, using heuristic algorithms that are well-described in the literature. These planning exercises may be conducted within politically or ecologically bounded target regions of varying extents. Here, I develop candidate locations for representative reserve areas for disturbance-sensitive mammals across Canada. I use ecologically bounded regions (within the national boundaries of Canada) at three different levels of spatial hierarchy: mammal provinces, ecozones, and ecoregions. I show that the extent of the target region has an effect on the minimum number of protected areas required to achieve representation; a larger region requires fewer protected areas than the sum of the protected areas required to represent its component regions at a lower level of spatial hierarchy. The results illustrate that selection of sites for inclusion in a reserve network is highly scale-dependent, and different spatial extents in the target regions may introduce inefficiencies or redundancies in selecting representative protected areas.

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Acknowledgments

YFW was supported by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and a grant from the Canadian Council on Ecological Areas. Mammal data was provided by NatureServe in collaboration with Bruce Patterson, Wes Sechrest, Marcelo Tognelli, Gerardo Ceballos, The Nature Conservancy—Migratory Bird Program, Conservation International—CABS, World Wildlife Fund—US, and Environment Canada—WILDSPACE. Thanks to D. Sleep, T. D. Nudds, R. L. Pressey, J. Wu, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript and to K. Lindsay for originally proposing the research idea. Additional research support was provided by grants from NSERC and Parks Canada to TDN.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada, N1G 2W1

    Yolanda F. Wiersma

  2. Department of Biology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada, A1B 3X9

    Yolanda F. Wiersma

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  1. Yolanda F. Wiersma
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Correspondence to Yolanda F. Wiersma.

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Wiersma, Y.F. The effect of target extent on the location of optimal protected areas networks in Canada. Landscape Ecol 22, 1477–1487 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-007-9126-2

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