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Priorities for conservation investment at a global scale that are based on a single taxon have been criticized because geographic richness patterns vary taxonomically. However, these concerns focused only on biodiversity patterns and did not consider the importance of socioeconomic factors, which must also be included if conservation funding is to be allocated efficiently. In this article, we create efficient global funding schedules that use information about conservation costs, predicted habitat loss rates, and the endemicity of seven different taxonomic groups. We discover that these funding allocation schedules are less sensitive to variation in taxon assessed than to variation in cost and threat. Two-thirds...
Protected areas vary enormously in their contribution to conserving biodiversity, and the inefficiency of protected area systems is widely acknowledged. However, conservation plans focus overwhelmingly on adding new sites to current protected area estates. Here we show that the conservation performance of a protected area system can be radically improved, without extra expenditure, by replacing a small number of protected areas with new ones that achieve more for conservation. Replacing the least cost-effective 1% of Australia's 6,990 strictly protected areas could increase the number of vegetation types that have 15% or more of their original extent protected from 18 to 54, of a maximum possible of 58. Moreover,...
MERGE provides a framework for thinking about climate change management proposals. The model is designed to be sufficiently flexible to be used to explore alternative views on a wide range of contentious issues, eg costs, damages, valuation and discounting. We begin with a description of the model's individual components and show how they fit together. We then provide an initial application to illustrate how the framework can be used in the assessment of alternative policy options. Given the level of uncertainty which pervades the climate debate, it would be unrealistic to expect cost-benefit analysis to lead to consensus on a bottom line -- at least any time soon. Rather, models such as MERGE should be viewed as...
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The Upper Colorado River Basin contains large deposits of oil shale, tar sands, crude oil, coal, and natural gas. Agriculture still accounts for 90% of the water depletions, but future development of these energy resources is expected to take increasing amounts of water. A mixed-integer programming model was used to maximize returns to land, water, and mineral resources. The results were used to assess the need for government-sponsored water conservation measures to supplement water saving techniques employed by the private sectors in response to increased water prices. The feasibilities of various water saving techniques by industries and of various government-sponsored water conservation measures were examined...
    map background search result map search result map An Evaluation of Water Conservation Techniques in the Upper Colorado River Basin An Evaluation of Water Conservation Techniques in the Upper Colorado River Basin