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Focusing Freshwater Efforts Across Large Geographic Areas
The primary purpose of regional scale conservation planning is to identify a set of conservation areas for further and more intensive conservation effort toward particular conservation goals - the conservation of individual native freshwater species, communities, and/or ecosystems of the region and the underlying ecological processes that sustain them. How those areas are designed and managed requires a more detailed analysis, usually at finer spatial scales (see Focusing Freshwater Efforts at Specific Locations for more information).
Setting priorities for freshwater biodiversity conservation across large geographic areas requires the collection and analysis of data and information across this area (county, basin, state, ecoregion, continent, etc.), using computer-based spatial analysis and other tools (e.g., expert opinion) to identify priority areas for future conservation action. The data and information used for these analyses generally includes the location of specific target species or species assemblages acquired through sampling as well as through assessment of spatial information.
Priority setting for any group of species, communities or ecosystems at a large geographic scale also requires techniques for narrowing the field of inquiry from all biodiversity found within a specific geographic region to specific species, communities, or physical features (e.g., geology, elevation, hydrography), or a combination of both biotic and abiotic features. Selected features are sometimes termed conservation targets.
The challenging issue with respect to identifying freshwater conservation targets across large geographic areas is that typical large scale conservation planning information sources (e.g., satellite imagery and remote sensing) are not available for freshwater and sampling information on freshwater species and communities is often very limited as well as inconsistent.
Given these challenges, the approach adopted by The Nature Conservancy uses data on physical and geographic features, combined with available information on patterns of native fish zoogeography, to establish ecological classifications across freshwater ecosystems (Lammert et al. 1997; Groves et al. 2000). The tools and standards developed by the Conservancy are being used in ecoregional planning throughout the Americas and Asia by The Nature Conservancy and by partner organizations such as World Wildlife Fund (for priority setting in their Global 2000 Freshwater Ecoregions project) and the USGS Aquatic Gap Program.
Learn More
The Nature Conservancy's Aquatic Ecosystem Classification Framework
