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Haselton, Britton Baldwin

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources

M.S.

Despite strong ecological relationships between terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, systematic conservation planning (reserve design) methodologies usually have addressed only one system at a time. This limits the usefulness of such methodologies when both systems are of interest. The goals of this study were to: (1) develop a methodology that integrates terrestrial and freshwater conservation planning approaches, and (2) compare integrated and single-system approaches. To address these objectives, I used a set of undeveloped lakeshore sites in a Northern Forest watershed to compare three different planning scenarios: a terrestrial scenario, a freshwater scenario, and an integrated scenario. Using Marxan reserve design software, candidate sites were evaluated for inclusion in the potential reserve network based on terrestrial and freshwater environmental diversity features and conservation suitability indices. The integrated scenario satisfied both terrestrial and freshwater conservation objectives with greater efficiency than the other two scenarios when combined. These results indicate that conservation planning methodologies that integrate terrestrial and freshwater objectives can produce more efficient solutions (i.e., less cost) than those that consider them separately.