Development and application of landscape equivalency analysis

The increasing economic value of land has been shown to be an important threat to biodiversity conservation, which is often manifested as habitat loss and fragmentation. As a possible solution, I have derived a method to scale economic incentives for habitat protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) based on the contribution habitat patches make to regional biodiversity service flows. The approach is termed Landscape Equivalency Analysis (LEA) and provides a link between local economic decisions and their regional ecological effects. Many endangered species persist on a regional basis through the exchange of individuals and genes among many local populations, so decisions of individual landowners at local scales may affect regional metapopulation persistence. The price of LEA credits represents the in-kind replacement value for three metapopulation services, total abundance, average genetic variance within local populations, and average genetic divergence among local populations. LEA credits can be are generated by strategically locating conservation banks to reverse the negative effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. By requiring the purchase of credits to offset the loss of metapopulation services due to economic development, landscape spatial structure can change without exacerbating the effects of habitat fragmentation. The purchase of LEA credits incorporates regional conservation values of land into local economic decisions. The approach provides a financially-based approach for directing economic growth around critical landscape components for endangered species and a justification for protection of land deemed valuable by traditional markets.; The metapopulation services used in LEA differ in sensitivity to changes in habitat area and connectivity, according to a species' natural history. Estimating metapopulation services requires simulating the interaction between landscape pattern and metapopulation processes. Landscape indices summarize landscape pattern, providing an alternative for landscape management, but do not necessarily capture changes in biological processes important for metapopulation persistence. To compare decisions based on simulation to those based on landscape indices, a spatially-explicit population model (SEPM) was constructed for the red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW). Two habitat trades were considered, (1) losing equivalent habitat area and connectivity as provided by the bank, and (2) losing more habitat area but less habitat connectivity compared to the bank. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...