Semmens, D.J., Diffendorfer, J.E., Bagstad, K.J., Wiederholt, Ruscena, Oberhauser, Karen, Ries, Leslie, Semmens, B.X., Goldstein, Joshua, Loomis, John, Thogmartin, W.E., Mattsson, B.J., López-Hoffman, Laura, Ancona, Zachary, 2018, Data release for Quantifying ecosystem service flows at multiple scales across the range of a long-distance migratory species: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/F7X63KVF.
The monarch population decline and correspondingly elevated risk of losing the eastern monarch migration (Semmens et al. 2016) have galvanized support for conservation across North America, with the Presidents of Mexico and the U.S. and the Prime Minister of Canada agreeing in 2014 to devise a plan for saving the continent’s monarch butterfly migration (Baker and Malkin 2014). Understanding where conservation efforts are needed from an ecological perspective has been the traditional focus of migratory species conservation efforts. However, the multi-national conservation effort for monarchs also raises important questions about who will benefit most from conservation investment, who will be negatively impacted (e.g., the opportunity cost of habitat protection), and how to balance the costs and benefits of conservation across a species’ migratory range. The spatial subsidy approach represents the first quantitative means of addressing these questions within the context of migratory species conservation. We use the monarch case study to explore how subsidies (net ES flows) can vary in relation to the spatial configuration of social and ecological boundaries.
The shapefile provided can be used to reproduce subsidy calculations or to conduct any further analysis using the input data outlined in the report.
