KEVIN J GASTON

Cantú-Salazar, L., Orme, C.D.L., Rasmussen, P.C., Blackburn, T.M. & Gaston, K.J. 2013. The performance of the global protected area system in capturing vertebrate geographic ranges. Biodiversity and Conservation 22, 1033-1047.

Given the heavy reliance placed on and investment in protected areas for biological conservation, there has been much debate as to how effective these are in representing biodiversity features within their boundaries. The majority of studies addressing this issue have been conducted on a regional or national basis, precluding a broad picture of patterns of representation at the species level. We present a global assessment of the representation of the terrestrial geographic ranges of complete taxonomic groups: all known extant amphibians, birds and mammals (20,736 species) within the current global system of protected areas. We conclude that it is necessary substantially to improve the levels of coverage of the geographic ranges of the majority of species, even the widespread ones. This is particularly true for rare species, which might be assumed to be foci for protected area systems. To improve on the low levels of coverage of vertebrate ranges attained by the existing areas, key regions should be targeted, but heavy reliance will also have to be placed on approaches to sustaining populations in the wider, unprotected landscape.

Anderson, K. & Gaston, K.J. 2013. Lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles will revolutionize spatial ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 11, 138-146.

Ecologists require spatially explicit data to relate structure to function. To date, heavy reliance has been placed on obtaining such data from remote-sensing instruments mounted on spacecraft or manned aircraft, although the spatial and temporal resolutions of the data are often not suited to local-scale ecological investigations. Recent technological innovations have led to an upsurge in the availability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – aircraft remotely operated from the ground – and there are now many lightweight UAVs on offer at reasonable costs. Flying low and slow, UAVs offer ecologists new opportunities for scale-appropriate measurements of ecological phenomena. Equipped with capable sensors, UAVs can deliver fine spatial resolution data at temporal resolutions defined by the end user. Recent innovations in UAV platform design have been accompanied by improvements in navigation and the miniaturization of measurement technologies, allowing the study of individual organisms and their spatiotemporal dynamics at close range.

Durán, A.P., Rauch, J. & Gaston, K.J. 2013. Spatial coincidence between protected areas and metal mining activities. Biological Conservation 160, 272-278.

The global protected area (PA) system has a key role to play in biological conservation, and it is thus vital to understand the factors that are likely to limit this potential. Attention to date has focused foremost on the consequences of biases in the spatial distribution of PAs for their effectiveness and efficiency in representing biodiversity. What is less clear is the extent to which these biases may also have affected the likelihood with which PAs coincide with or are influenced by particular kinds of threatening processes, further undermining their role. An obvious candidate for such concerns is metal mining activities. Here we demonstrate that approximately 7% of mines for four key metals directly overlap with PAs and a further 27% lie within 10 km of a PA boundary. Moreover, those PAs with mining activity within their boundaries constitute around 6% of the total areal coverage of the global terrestrial PA system, and those with mining activity within or up to 10 km from their boundary constitute nearly 14% of the total area. Given the distances over which mining activities can have influences, the persistence of their effects (often long after actual operations have closed down), and the rapidly growing demand for metals, there is an urgent need to limit or mitigate such conflicts.

Lennox, G.D., Gaston, K.J., Acs, S., Dallimer, M., Hanley, N. & Armsworth, P.R. 2013. Conservation when landowners have bargaining power: continuous conservation investments and cost uncertainty. Ecological Economics 93, 69-78.

Spatially heterogeneous costs of securing conservation agreements should be accounted forwhen prioritizing properties for conservation investment. Most researchers incorporating conservation costs into analyses have relied on estimates of landowners’ opportunity costs of accepting a conservation agreement. Implicitly assumed in such studies is therefore that thosewho“produce” biodiversity (landowners) receive none of the surplus available from trade. Instead, landowners could use their bargaining power to gain profits from conservation investments. We employ game theory to determine the surplus landowners could obtain in negotiations over conservation agreements, and the consequent effects on conservation outcomes,when enrolment decisions are governed by continuous variables (e.g. the proportion of a property to enrol). In addition, we consider how landowner uncertainty regarding the opportunity costs of other landowners affects these outcomes. Landowners’ ability to gain surplus is highly variable and reflects variation in the substitutability of different properties for achieving a specified conservation objective. The ability of landowners to obtain profits from conservation agreements results in conservation outcomes that are substantially diminished relative to when landowners accept investment at opportunity costs. Uncertainty increases landowner profits, leading to a greater diminution in conservation benefits.