• Energy Research

AbstractPolicy documents advocate that managers should keep their options open while planning to protect coastal ecosystems from climate‐change impacts. However, the actual costs and benefits of maintaining flexibility remain largely unexplored, and alternative approaches for decision making under uncertainty may lead to better joint outcomes for conservation and other societal goals. For example, keeping options open for coastal ecosystems incurs opportunity costs for developers. We devised a decision framework that integrates these costs and benefits with probabilistic forecasts for the extent of sea‐level rise to find a balance between coastal ecosystem protection and moderate coastal development. Here, we suggest that instead of keeping their options open managers should incorporate uncertain sea‐level rise predictions into a decision‐making framework that evaluates the benefits and costs of conservation and development. In our example, based on plausible scenarios for sea‐level rise and assuming a risk‐neutral decision maker, we found that substantial development could be accommodated with negligible loss of environmental assets. Characterization of the Pareto efficiency of conservation and development outcomes provides valuable insight into the intensity of trade‐offs between development and conservation. However, additional work is required to improve understanding of the consequences of alternative spatial plans and the value judgments and risk preferences of decision makers and stakeholders.Minimizando el Costo de Mantener Opciones Abiertas para la Conservación en un Clima Cambiante

AbstractREDD+ presents novel options for conservation in the tropics, yet it is unclear how biodiversity‐focused organizations or actors should react to these carbon‐focused opportunities. Here, we critically assess for the first time the expected outcomes of five contrasting scenarios of engagement between a biodiversity actor and REDD+. We discover that in the Berau regency, Indonesia, it is usually beneficial for a biodiversity actor to react in some way to REDD+, but the preferred reaction depends on whether a REDD+ project is already developing in the region, and the scale and type of conservation objectives. In general, from a strict biodiversity perspective, the most cost efficient reaction to the presence of REDD+ is to use biodiversity funds to protect areas neglected by REDD+. Our results demonstrate that if biodiversity actors fail to adapt the way they pursue conservation in the tropics, REDD+ opportunities could go largely untapped.

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) No abstract provided.

Marine reserves deliver impressive increases in the abundance and size of exploited species on protected reefs, but larval dispersal makes it difficult to estimate their wider benefits. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) contains an extensive network of marine reserves. By combining GBR-wide fish surveys, larval dispersal models, and commercial fishery catch data, we calculate the system-wide ecological and economic contributions of these reserves for coral groupers ( Plectropomus spp.), the region’s most important line fishery. Despite covering only 30% of reef habitat, the GBR’s marine reserve network contains half of the species’ biomass and generates most of its reproductive output (55%), half of the system’s larval settlement (50%), and almost half of the total fishery yield (47%).

Abstract Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly integrated into fishery management for coastal systems. Size and spacing rules (SSRs) have been proposed as simple MPA design guidelines, especially in regions where population connectivity data are limited. We assessed whether SSRs allow managers to design effective MPA networks under spatiotemporally varying dispersal patterns using a spatially realistic population model parameterized for a commercially‐exploited fish species on the Great Barrier Reef. SSRs are used to design MPA networks, and population simulations are used to measure the mean and variance of the resulting population size and fishery catch. We show that SSR performance is contingent on the extent of the MPA network, and whether species’ connectivity data can be used to target areas for protection. For example, in the absence of connectivity data, a “many small” MPAs rule provides the least variable management outcome. Synthesis and applications. We demonstrate that the performance and usefulness of size and spacing rules (SSRs) as guidelines for marine protected areas (MPAs) depend on the level of knowledge about larval dispersal, as well as the level of current exploitation in the fishery. These context‐dependent results offer particularly relevant guidance to future MPA design projects in regions with limited connectivity data.

Significance Every year, more species are driven to extinction by the combined pressures of habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change. These ongoing losses have created a “crisis culture” in conservation, where project funds are spent as soon as they are received. We challenge this orthodoxy and demonstrate how strategic delays can improve efficiency. Waiting can allow agencies to leverage additional benefits from their funds, through investment, capacity building, or monitoring and research. With the right amount of delay, limited conservation resources can protect more species. Surprisingly, they can even do so in less time. Our results suggest that, in addition to their current focus on where to target resources, conservation managers should carefully choose when to spend these funds.