A quantitative analysis of biodiversity for land-use and reserve system planning.

摘要

This dissertation is an analysis of ecological health, using a modeling approach based on biodiversity indicators, ecosystem monitoring, and reserve area design. Biodiversity is a documented metric for health, and I begin chapter one with a discussion of alternative definitions and possible analysis techniques. I also describe some of the historical elements of biodiversity, which I combine using five criteria to produce a working model. The model serves to quantify biodiversity, requiring a series of sub-models working at multiple spatial and thematic scales. Chapter two further explores some of the assumptions and constraints from the biodiversity analysis, with emphasis on the roles of data bias and restrictions, as well as introducing new concepts of species and habitat assessment. Comparisons of urban growth models are made, and interactions between urban models and ecological models are analyzed. The third chapter demonstrates how results from biodiversity analysis can be used to guide the selection of biodiversity management areas, introducing an approach that couples biodiversity assessment with spatially explicit simulated annealing. In each chapter I use biodiversity indicators over hectare to kilometer-sized areas, though my methods are not restricted to a specific spatial sampling domain. Compared to the simpler approaches, the composite method I use has the disadvantages of lowering precision and greater difficulty, however I also receive the beneficial trade-off of increasing relevance to biodiversity. The final products from this research are not intended to stand alone; rather they represent one component of biodiversity that should be supported by both finer and coarser scales of analysis.