1. Jeff Malone

2. Designation of conservation and protection usually based on factors such as: Historical significance Recreational use Scenic beauty Protection of wetlands, forests, watersheds Biodiversity is usually NOT taken into account

3. Efforts to ID gaps in biodiversity protection Map predictions of species distribution Compare to protected areas For example… Long Tailed Sabrewing

4. Species distribution modeling of preservation systems For 19 bird and mammal species Distributions were modeled Gaps in protection identified Possible solution developed for enhancing protection of species Red-Crowned Parrot

6. 2 types of data used Species distribution data Environmental attribute data (in raster GIS architecture) Species selected have primary native habitat in Veracruz, Mexico Selection as well as distributional data based on literature and observations Bearded Wood Partridge

8. Thematic geographic layers used to define environmental variables Combined to create single image file Then for each species distribution point, the values for each geographic layer were extracted Crimson- Collared Grosbeak

9. Those values from the geographic layers were used to create a 6-dimensional box Its limits represent the defining criteria for species distribution Used to select pixels in study area meeting same criteria Mexican Black Agouti

10. Also known as a ‘parallelepiped’

11. The 6 layers a filtered through a decision rule To produce a predicted distribution map Which was plausibility tested based on field knowledge 6 species were overestimated in the literature Areas of overestimation were set to zero in the GIS distribution maps Tawny-Collared Nightjar

13. Final Step: optimal reserve system was identified based on predicted distributions Buffer was created around each predicted distributional pixel All buffered species maps were summed to create a map of species richness More species in an area, higher conservation priority Species present were removed, summed remaining species maps to ID next conservation priority

14. Black dots = known presence Dark gray = predicted location Light gray = apparent overestimations

15. For comparison, existing protected areas were evaluated the same way Each protected area evaluated for species richness Mexican Sheartail

16. Existing preserves buffered to 100,000 ha Raster GIS overlay operation used to compare protected areas to species richness Of 19 species, 12 are found in currently protected areas Dwarf Jay

18. Identified reserve system ignoring current one 16 species in 4 reserves, all 19 in 7 reserves But cannot ignore/scrap current preserves Alternative is to complement existing preserves with unprotected species By adding 5 of the potential preserves from optimal model, all 19 native species could be protected More plausible to take a hybrid approach Altamira Yellowthroat

19. Black dots = existing preserves Dark gray = potential new preserves (1,3,5,6 and 7 combined would protect all 19 species)