COS 79-1 - CANCELLED - The Earthwise Framework and Tool: Meeting Human and Biodiversity Needs for 30 × 30 and beyond.

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

10:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT

Location: C120-121

Presenting Author(s)

JG

John A. Gallo

Conservation Biology Institute
Corvallis, Oregon, United States

Coauthor(s)

FD

Frank Davis

UC Santa Barbara, United States
AL

Amanda Lombard

Nelson Mandela University, South Africa
RG

Randal Greene

Feaver's Lane Enterprises, Canada
RC

Rob Campellone

Institute of Landscape Conservation Design, United States
TM

Thomas Miewald

Oregon Regional Conservation Partnership Program Coordinator
National Resource Conservation Service, United States

Abstract: The Earthwise Framework shows promise in finding a better way to meet the needs of both humans and of biodiversity. It is a customizable conservation planning, action, and monitoring enterprise with technical, social, and institutional frameworks, under development. The technical framework is an open science endeavor that can be implemented via a variety of software tools and languages, and has several frontiers for further research and development.

The technical framework has breakthroughs to address two key challenges of the institutional framework. One challenge is moving from systematic conservation planning to actual on-the-ground management change, and the other challenge is moving beyond implementation action to effective monitoring that informs iterative planning. These challenges are especially important to resolve now that the 30x30 initiative (conserving 30% of the oceans and lands by 2030) is endorsed by over 180 countries worldwide.

Over the past 15 years, we have built and applied customizable instances of the modeling toolbox that support this framework in five regions: Santa Barbara, California; Little Karoo, South Africa; Sonoma County, California; Salish Sea Islands, British Columbia, and Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. Each toolbox applies the same analytic tenets of the framework, often in different ways.

A core analytic tenet is the use of an iterative allocation algorithm (IAA), which has as an input a transparent multi-criteria spatial overlay yielding a conservation value score for each site. The result of the IAA is a portfolio of sites (e.g. 30% of a planning region) to conserve that is much more optimal than simply the top 30% of the region identified by the spatial overlay analysis. For example, it is much more connected, and better represents habitat diversity (and other diversity measures) in the portfolio. Why not just use existing optimization modeling like Marxan or Zonation? Because this one is more transparent and easier to understand. This supports one of the social tenets of the framework: engaging more stakeholders, decision-makers, and analysts in model development and use leads to better buy-in and implementation. Further, the adaptive management and monitoring of a variety of criteria can then feed back into the model on a one to one basis, clearly showing what assumptions were right and wrong and how the model and weights need to change. Finally, the multi-scale nature of the system furthers the bridge between conservation planning and adaptive management. Utilizing case study experience we present the framework, tenets and key results.