Publication Details |
| Category | Text Publication |
| Reference Category | Journals |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.biocon.2006.11.011 |
| Title (Primary) | Evaluating cost-effectiveness of conservation management actions in an agricultural landscape on a regional scale |
| Author | Holzkämper, A.; Seppelt, R. |
| Source Titel | Biological Conservation |
| Year | 2007 |
| Department | CLE |
| Volume | 136 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Page From | 117 |
| Page To | 127 |
| Language | englisch |
| Keywords | Spatially explicit optimisation; Cost-benefit analysis; Habitat suitability; Ecological-economic modelling; Regionalisation |
| Abstract | Agricultural landscapes are the dominating landscape types in many parts of the world. Land-use intensification and spatial homogeneity are major threats to biodiversity in these landscapes. Thus cost-effective strategies for species conservation in large-scale agricultural landscapes are required. Spatial optimisation methods can be applied to identify the most effective allocation of a given budget for conservation. However, the optimisation of spatial land-use patterns in real landscapes on a large spatial scale is often limited by computational power. In this paper, we present a simplifying methodology for analysing cost-effectiveness of management actions on a regional scale. A spatially explicit optimisation approach is employed to identify optimum agricultural land-use patterns with respect to an ecological-economic goal function. Based on the optimisation results for small scale landscape samples we derive a target- and site-specific cost-benefit function that can be applied to predict ecological improvement as a function of costs and local conditions on a large spatial scale. Thus, it is possible to identify areas where management actions for ecological improvement are most efficient with respect to a certain conservation goal. The fitted function is validated independently. In a case study, we analyse cost-effectiveness of management actions to enhance habitat suitability for three different target species. The approach is flexible and could be applied to a variety of other landscape planning problems dealing with the effective allocation of management measures. |
| Holzkämper, A., Seppelt, R. (2007): Evaluating cost-effectiveness of conservation management actions in an agricultural landscape on a regional scale Biol. Conserv. 136 (1), 117 - 127 10.1016/j.biocon.2006.11.011 |
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