Archive for May, 2009

Many methods exist for selecting areas for conservation or reserve systems. One of these methods is to use “irreplaceability analyses.” Output for such scores can give you a gradient of how “irreplaceable” a particular site is, or given habitat and species occurrence data, what sites are very unique and not replaceable. Part of my research involves the integration of data on habitat variability and determinants of patch occupancy into reserve design analyses. Here is one example output of an irreplaceability analysis from MARXAN using data on the Carson Valley silverspot butterfly.