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Dryad

Data From: Conservation planning in an uncertain climate: identifying projects that remain valuable and feasible across future scenarios

Data files

Oct 30, 2020 version files 1.29 MB

Abstract

Conservation actors face the challenge of allocating limited resources despite uncertainty about future climate. A key goal is to minimize the potential for negative outcomes under future scenarios. Thus, we address a global conservation challenge: how to allocate conservation investments given high uncertainty about future climate conditions. To that end, we present a method for identifying projects that remain valuable and feasible across climate scenarios and apply our framework to freshwater biodiversity conservation in the South-Central USA. We combine data from a recent high-resolution hydrologic planning tool and species distribution models to estimate the conservation feasibility and biodiversity value of river reaches below 38 major reservoirs in the Red River basin.We find that only 13% of sites have high conservation priority across all future climate scenarios and that spatial patterns of conservation priority largely reflect patterns of water availability and fish biodiversity.