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Created November 18, 2009 21:24
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An Analysis of Conservation Gaps for Mexico

Jorge Soberon

  • Mexico Eco-preservation
    • Haphazard organization
    • Started in 1920
    • Big uptake in 1970 & again in 1990
    • Usually one person
    • Last ten years have seen a 5x increase. (5M to 25M)
  • Drivers
    • NGO (WWF, World Conservation, Nature Conservancy, etc) analysis (BINGO!)
    • Multinationals
    • Mexican federal gov't.
  • 18 major stakeholders, hundreds of smaller ones
    • Mexican gov't required cooperation for official results
    • Complementary analysis
    • Annealing algorithm used
  • Pull data from many sources
    • Historical data
    • Large volume from digital sources (databases, etc)
  • Heavy bias is a major issue
    • 19 factors used to resolve this bias
    • Use the raw data
    • Then apply areas with similar ecologies
    • Predicts distribution
    • Done for 3000 species over 3 years
  • Ecoregional analysis
    • Four layers of analysis
    • Top three multinational
  • Protected areas
    • Federal
    • State
    • Municipality
    • Private
  • Ecoregional assessment
    • Surprising results
    • Most protected areas are high elevation
    • Majority of areas lack protection/management
  • Algorithmic weighting difficult
    • Based on species count, threatened species, genetic diversity, etc
    • The result of negotiation
    • Conflict of interest
  • Geo analysis shows that many protected areas actually aren't priorities
    • 12.9% of high/very high covered by protected areas
  • Marine gap analysis
    • Similar analysis
    • Starved for data in comparison
    • Heavily influenced by experts
    • For the first time, identification of deep sea areas of importance
  • Fresh water gap analysis
    _ Similar analysis - Interesting because the small bodies turned out to be much more important
  • Wiki approach
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