PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #69: Conservation: Biodiversity assessment and reserve design.
Presiding: T. Norton
Wednesday, August 7. 1:00 PM to 4:45 PM. Grand Ballroom Central, Radisson.
Multi-objective analysis of umbrella effects and reserve design for the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Rozdilsky, Ian*,1, Williams, Justin2, Revelle, Charles2, Levin, Simon1, 1 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ2 John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
ABSTRACT- The Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative is a bi-national effort to maintain and restore the biological diversity and unique natural heritage of the region stretching from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem north along the spine of the Rocky Mountains to the Mackenzie Mountains in the northern Yukon Territory. At first glance, it is nearly an impossible task to develop a conservation strategy for such a large region, with many competing concerns both social and ecological, and generally poor quality data sets. The strategy therefore pursued here is to develop a flexible planning process which uses the best available simplifications to develop starting priorities, and a structure for incorporating better information as it becomes available. One aspect of this project is the protection of animal habitats. Possible starting simplifications will be addressed through determining if protecting the habitat of individual species or groups of species will effectively protect habitat for other animal groups. Such simplifications, often called umbrella effects, will be examined through the creation of multiobjective tradeoff curves based on habitat suitability measures for carnivore, aquatic, and avian species within the Northern Rocky Mountains of the United States. Given these starting priorities, methods of designing reserves which incorporate multiple objectives in a context of changing information availability and human priorities will be presented.
KEY WORDS: umbrella effect, multiobjective, reserve design, Y2Y