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Beyond area-based design: Optimizing urban Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures with a scale-sensitive, multi-species framework

Li, Minhui1; Weng, Yue1; Wang, Hongmin1; Zhao, Xi1; Zheng, Yunxiang2; Lin, Weiming1; Tang, Lishan1; Wang, Fang1

Published Sep 14, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4b8gthtvh

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Abstract

With 68% of the global population projected to reside in urban areas by 2050, conserving urban biodiversity through Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) represents an urgent global priority under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. OECMs are geographically defined, non-protected areas that sustain long-term biodiversity through diverse management practices, such as community-managed forests that balance sustainable livelihoods with habitat preservation for endangered species. However, a fundamental challenge lies in the pervasive scale mismatch between conservation interventions and the specific spatial scales at which species perceive and respond to fragmented urban landscapes.
Utilizing extensive camera-trap data from 136 sites across Shanghai, we developed a novel multi-scale occupancy modeling framework. This approach quantified the scale-dependent habitat responses of eight common mammalian and avian species. We then performed Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on these results to categorize species into functional groups based on their scale-dependent response patterns.
Our results demonstrate that urban OECM effectiveness is critically scale-dependent, revealing that the majority (66.7%) of species-landscape relationships are governed by fine-scale factors (<1,000 m), with 15.6% peaking at an ultra-fine 50-m scale, highlighting the paramount importance of local habitat design.
Crucially, 51% of these relationships reversed direction across spatial scales, revealing how fine-scale habitat selection driven by natural resources can be fundamentally overridden by broad-scale anthropogenic pressures.
Building on these cross-scale response patterns, we classified urban wildlife in Shanghai into four functional groups, shifting the conservation paradigm from a one-size-fits-all solution to precision conservation strategies tailored to specific scale dependencies.
Synthesis and applications: Applying this framework, we identified specific instances within Shanghai’s potential OECM network where conservation outcomes are critically undermined by scale mismatch. Our work advocated targeted pathways for Shanghai urban biodiversity conservation, meanwhile provides a generalizable approach that explicitly integrates the scale of effect into area-based conservation planning, offering a generic approach for advancing urban biodiversity conservation under the post-2020 global biodiversity agenda.