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Draft:Systematic Conservation Planning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • Comment: This is still very clearly written by AI. Devonian Wombat (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2026 (UTC)



Introduction

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Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is a structured approach to identifying and prioritising areas for biodiversity conservation.[1] It applies principles from conservation biology and emerged during the 1980s and 1990s.[2] Before this, protected areas were often chosen in an ad hoc way, favouring sites that were convenient or scenic, or that held little commercial value rather than those most important for biodiversity.[3] The approach uses explicit and quantitative targets for conservation features such as species, habitats, and ecological processes, and it seeks to achieve those targets efficiently while accounting for costs and existing land use. A widely cited framework set out by Chris Margules and Robert Pressey in 2000[1] describes the process as a series of stages that includes compiling data on biodiversity, setting measurable goals, reviewing existing conservation areas, selecting additional areas, and implementing and maintaining conservation action. Central to the method are the principles of complementarity, which favours sites that add features not already represented, and irreplaceability, which measures how essential a particular area is to meeting overall targets.

Spatial prioritisation methods and software

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Systematic conservation planning analyses often use spatial prioritisation tools to compare options against objectives and constraints. Tools vary in the optimisation methods they use and in whether outputs are intended as a set of areas (a “solution”) or a ranked surface of relative priority.

Examples include:

  • Marxan and Marxan with Zones: Uses simulated annealing to search for sets of planning units that meet targets while minimising a cost function. Marxan with Zones extends this to multiple zone types for land or sea-use planning.[4]
  • Zonation: Produces a hierarchical ranking by iteratively removing locations that contribute least to overall conservation value under the model's assumptions.[5]
  • prioritizr: An R (programming language) package that formulates conservation planning problems as integer programming models and solves them using exact or near-exact optimisation solvers.[6]
  • CLUZ: A QGIS plugin intended to support interactive, “on-screen” planning and to interface with Marxan and Marxan with Zones workflows.[7]

Applications

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SCP has been applied in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine contexts, including:

  • Designing or expanding protected area networks and related ecological networks.[8][9]
  • Marine spatial planning and zoning processes.[10]
  • National and regional biodiversity assessments and plans, including programmes in South Africa described as “systematic biodiversity planning.”[11]

References

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  1. 1 2 Margules, C. R.; Pressey, R. L. (May 2000). "Systematic conservation planning". Nature. 405 (6783): 243–253. Bibcode:2000Natur.405..243M. doi:10.1038/35012251. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 10821285.
  2. ↑ Kirkpatrick, J.B. (February 1983). "An iterative method for establishing priorities for the selection of nature reserves: An example from Tasmania". Biological Conservation. 25 (2): 127–134. Bibcode:1983BCons..25..127K. doi:10.1016/0006-3207(83)90056-3. ISSN 0006-3207.
  3. ↑ Venter, Oscar; Magrach, Ainhoa; Outram, Nick; Klein, Carissa Joy; Possingham, Hugh P.; Di Marco, Moreno; Watson, James E.M. (2017-11-16). "Bias in protected-area location and its effects on long-term aspirations of biodiversity conventions". Conservation Biology. 32 (1): 127–134. doi:10.1111/cobi.12970. ISSN 0888-8892. PMID 28639356.
  4. ↑ Ball, Ian R; Possingham, Hugh P; Watts, Matthew E (2009-05-28), "Marxan and Relatives: Software for Spatial Conservation Prioritization", Spatial Conservation Prioritization, Oxford University PressOxford, pp. 185–195, doi:10.1093/oso/9780199547760.003.0014, ISBN 978-0-19-954776-0, retrieved 2026-07-30
  5. ↑ Moilanen, Atte; Franco, Aldina M.A; Early, Regan I; Fox, Richard; Wintle, Brendan; Thomas, Chris D (2005-08-02). "Prioritizing multiple-use landscapes for conservation: methods for large multi-species planning problems". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 272 (1575): 1885–1891. doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3164. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 1559892. PMID 16191593.
  6. ↑ Hanson, Jeffrey O.; Schuster, Richard; Strimas-Mackey, Matthew; Morrell, Nina; Edwards, Brandon P. M.; Arcese, Peter; Bennett, Joseph R.; Possingham, Hugh P. (2024-09-13). "Systematic conservation prioritization with the prioritizr R package". Conservation Biology. 39 (1) e14376. doi:10.1111/cobi.14376. ISSN 0888-8892. PMID 39268847.
  7. ↑ Smith, Robert (2019-01-31). "The CLUZ plugin for QGIS: designing conservation area systems and other ecological networks". Research Ideas and Outcomes. 5 e33510. doi:10.3897/rio.5.e33510. ISSN 2367-7163.
  8. ↑ Sinclair, Samuel P.; Milner-Gulland, E.J.; Smith, Robert J.; McIntosh, Emma J.; Possingham, Hugh P.; Vercammen, Ans; Knight, Andrew T. (2018-05-03). "The use, and usefulness, of spatial conservation prioritizations". Conservation Letters. 11 (6) e12459. Bibcode:2018ConL...11E2459S. doi:10.1111/conl.12459. ISSN 1755-263X.
  9. ↑ Smith, Robert J.; Cartwright, Samantha J.; Fairbairn, Andrew C.; Lewis, Deborah C.; Gibbon, Gwili E. M.; Stewart, Claire L.; Sykes, Rachel E.; Addison, Prue F. E. (2021-11-10). "Developing a nature recovery network using systematic conservation planning". Conservation Science and Practice. 4 (1) e578. doi:10.1111/csp2.578. ISSN 2578-4854.
  10. ↑ Kenchington, R. A.; Day, J. C. (2011-02-16). "Zoning, a fundamental cornerstone of effective Marine Spatial Planning: lessons learnt from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia". Journal of Coastal Conservation. 15 (2): 271–278. Bibcode:2011JCC....15..271K. doi:10.1007/s11852-011-0147-2. ISSN 1400-0350.
  11. ↑ "Biodiversity Planning - SANBI". 2018-03-12. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
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