PhD Thesis

Advances in Conservation Biogeography: Towards Protected Area Effectiveness under Anthropogenic Threats

Samuel Hoffmann (05/2016-12/2019)

Support: Carl Beierkuhnlein, Heike Feldhaar, Manuel Steinbauer

The Anthropocene is characterised by unprecedented declines in nature causing the sixth mass extinction event in earth history. The main drivers of these immense deteriorations are human land use and anthropogenic climate change. A dilemma evolves because human welfare depends on the conservation of nature’s integrity. We profit from ecosystem functioning, goods and services, which are based on biodiversity. Moreover, species have the right to exist independent of their use for us. The use and existence values of nature motivate nature conservation. Global biodiversity hotspots are in focus of international conservation as they contain a rich inventory of species. Inventory diversity is, nevertheless, only one of three broad categories classifying diversity indices. Other diversity metrics that offer complementary information refer to differentiation or proportional diversity, and account for the dissimilarity between species assemblages. Effective biodiversity conservation contemplates multiple measures of species diversity as well as threats to biodiversity. Anthropogenic climate change is a major threat to biodiversity that inevitably affects the entire global land in multiple ways, not only hotspots of species diversity. The change in the magnitude, timing, position and availability of climate conditions exerts influence on the demography, phenology and range of species, with unknown consequences for ecosystems worldwide. Therefore, biodiversity conservation must be applied to large geographical extents, which is the foundation of conservation biogeography. Conservation biogeographers investigate protected areas as major tools to protect biodiversity because a high degree of biodiversity can hardly exist in unprotected landscapes that are intensively used by humans. Approximately 15% of global land is covered by protected areas. To overcome the many challenges emerging from anthropogenic pressures, protected areas need efficient and effective planning and management. Such planning and management often lacks the continuous availability of data on current states and trends of nature and threats, which can be delivered by in-situ monitoring, remote sensing and open data infrastructures. Since resources for planning and management are limited, conservationists prioritise conservation targets. Given the rising importance of protected areas owing to expanding human land use and increasing climate change, I address the effectiveness and efficiency of terrestrial protected areas in conserving biodiversity under anthropogenic threats through the six manuscripts of this thesis. I assign each manuscript to the scientific modules of an adaptive protected area management cycle. Adaptive protected area management is an auspicious concept to ensure the enduring effectiveness of protected areas under uncertain future developments. My manuscripts provide missing scientific foundations of adaptive protected area management. In Manuscript 1, I present a comprehensive quantification of the diversity of the European Union’s priority species within major protected areas in the European Union. This quantification of inventory, differentiation and proportional diversity informs protected area management of manifold metrics of species diversity to increase protected area management effectiveness from the local to the European extent. In Manuscript 2, I prove to what degree remote sensing signals (i.e. airborne Light Detection and Ranging data, and a time series of multispectral Sentinel-2 data) reflect the compositional dissimilarity of perennial plant communities on the protected island of La Palma, Canary Islands. This study fosters efficient monitoring of differentiation diversity by remote sensing techniques. Monitoring of the biotic and abiotic environment is a scientific prerequisite of adaptive protected area management. In Manuscript 3, I developed a method to optimise in-situ surveys of biodiversity, i.e. to maximise information content and minimise sampling effort. This approach enhances the efficiency of in-situ surveys, which is required under limited management resources, such as time and funds. As a case study, I analysed the inventory diversity of alpine grassland in the Gran Paradiso National Park, Italy. I supply the data on this threatened vegetation type in an open data paper (Manuscript 4). Moreover, I show predicted changes in the availability of climate conditions (Manuscript 5) and the predicted magnitude of climate change (Manuscript 6) within the global terrestrial protected area estate for two alternative climate change scenarios in the year 2070. These two studies inform protected area management worldwide of the climate change impacts on biodiversity, to sustain protected area management effectiveness from the local to global extent. In addition, I aim at spreading this conservation-minded knowledge and data by providing open-source software and open data, and by open-access publishing. Consequently, this thesis advances the effectiveness and efficiency of protected areas in biodiversity conservation, mediated through adaptive protected area management. Filling biogeographical knowledge gaps, improving biogeographical forecasts and promoting biodiversity conservation by communicating research are permanent tasks for conservation biogeographers. The global biodiversity crisis can be solved by local conservation strategies worldwide that are internationally coordinated. Eventually, I consider the development of a global adaptive protected area management system the most favourable future perspective in conservation biogeography to stop nature’s declines and guarantee a sustainable future for the welfare of generations to come.