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Home Research and CollectionsBiodiversity & Systematics
A Biodiversity Conservation Plan for Papua New Guinea Based on Biodiversity Trade-offs Analysis
Preferences
Preferences refer to features that, all else being equal, it would be preferable to include or exclude from the priority area set. Areas with low human population density and areas previously identified by experts as having high conservation value are two preferences used in this study and described below. Although it is listed as an opportunity cost above, absence of agricultural potential was treated as a preference in our analyses because it was determined that the cost trade-off component of the analysis should be done with timber volume, currently a more valuable commodity than agricultural production. This was done by carrying out an initial round of selections in which only areas having low agricultural potential (along with other preference criteria) were made available for selection.
The Conservation Needs Assessment (CNA)
CNA priority 1 areas (Alcorn 1993; Beehler 1993) were mapped and used to help guide the selection of Priority areas. An RMU falling within a CNA priority 1 area was selected over an RMU falling outside these areas, all else being equal. This preference was achieved in the course of building up a set of proposed areas, by maintaining masking and cost trade-offs operations, but looking first for a suitable RMU that was also a CNA priority area. In Figure 1e, the boundaries of the areas shown vary slightly from original CNA maps in that entire RMUS are assigned here to CNA priority 1 if most of their area overlapped with a priority 1 area.
Human population density
Population density information, extracted from PNGRIS, was treated in exactly the same way as CNA priority 1 areas, giving preference to low population density. All else being equal, an RMU with low population density was chosen over an RMU with high population density. Figure 1f is a map of human population density from PNGRIS, which shows that there are few areas with a high human population density.
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