Assessing representation of remote sensing derived forest structure and land cover across a network of protected areas.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Muise, Evan R. Coops, Nicholas C. Hermosilla, Txomin Ban, Stephen S.
Abstract	AbstractProtected areas (PA) are an effective means of conserving biodiversity and protecting suites of valuable ecosystem services. Currently, many nations and international governments use proportional area protected as a critical metric for assessing progress towards biodiversity conservation. However, the areal and other common metrics do not assess the effectiveness of PA networks, nor do they assess how representative PA are of the ecosystems they aim to protect. Topography, stand structure, and land cover are all key drivers of biodiversity within forest environments, and are well‐suited as indicators to assess the representation of PA. Here, we examine the PA network in British Columbia, Canada, through drivers derived from freely‐available data and remote sensing products across the provincial biogeoclimatic ecosystem classification system. We examine biases in the PA network by elevation, forest disturbances, and forest structural attributes, including height, cover, and biomass by comparing a random sample of protected and unprotected pixels. Results indicate that PA are commonly biased towards high‐elevation and alpine land covers, and that forest structural attributes of the park network are often significantly different in protected versus unprotected areas (426 out of 496 forest structural attributes found to be different; p < 0.01). Analysis of forest structural attributes suggests that establishing additional PA could ensure representation of various forest structure regimes across British Columbia's ecosystems. We conclude that these approaches using free and open remote sensing data are highly transferable and can be accomplished using consistent datasets to assess PA representations globally.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC9286433&blobtype=pdf
Page Count	17
ISSN	10510761
Journal	Ecological Applications [Ecol Appl]
Volume Number	32
DOI	10.1002/eap.2603
PubMed Central reference number	PMC9286433
Issue Number	5
PubMed reference number	35366029
e-ISSN	19395582
Language	English
Publisher	John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Publisher Date	2022-05-17
Publisher Place	Hoboken, USA
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. © 2022 The Authors. Ecological Applications published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.
Subject Keyword	ecological classifications forest disturbances forest structure land cover protected areas remote sensing
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology