Conservation planning has typically used long-term averages to represent species’ distributions. However, this approach risks overlooking important spatial and temporal variation that might prove important for the persistence of populations. In our recently published paper in Diversity and Distributions, led by Kaylan Kemink, we assessed how much variability an averaged conservation tool might overlook if applied in a dynamic system. We examined breeding pair and brood waterfowl distributions in the Prairie Pothole Region of the United States as a case study.
We used ten years of count data to model the spatiotemporal distribution of waterfowl pair and broods for comparison to a commonly used conservation planning tool based on averaged population values. We found some evidence of overlap between the averaged and spatiotemporal pair distributions, but our results strongly supported the need for integration of spatiotemporal dynamics in conservation planning in the region. Using averaged data resulted in the omission of up to 46% of important pair habitat and up to 98% of important brood habitat.
From Figure 5 of the paper. Most abundant 7,203.41 km2 of averaged pair, predicted pair, and predicted brood distributions. Areas of overlap between averaged pair and predicted pair (royal blue), averaged pair and predicted brood (yellow), predicted pair and predicted brood (light blue), all three distributions (red), superimposed on major level III North American ecoregions.
