Habitat and Open Space at Risk of Land-Use Conversion: Targeting Strategies for Land Conservation

Abstract

Funds available to purchase land and easements for conservation purposes are limited. This article provides a targeting strategy for protecting multiple environmental benefits that includes heterogeneity in land costs and probability of land-use conversion, by incorporating spatially explicit land-use change and hedonic price models. This strategy is compared to two alternative strategies that omit either land cost or conversion threat. Based on dynamic programming and Monte Carlo simulations with alternating periods of conservation and development, we demonstrate that the positive correlation between land costs and probability of land-use conversion affects targeting efficiency using parcel data from Sonoma County, California. Key words: dynamic programming, land-use change, reserve site selection. Voters passed 801 referenda in state and lo-cal ballot initiatives between 1998 and 2003 within the United States, committing more than $24 billion to fund land acquisition and easements for open space, habitat protection, and other conservation objectives (Trust for Public Land, 2003). Nongovernmental organi-zations, such as The Nature Conservancy and local land trusts, have also become more nu-merous and better funded (Merenlender et al., 2004). Nonetheless, conservation budgets are far less than the cost of protecting all the re-maining desirable lands, and tradeoffs must be made when targeting available sites for protection. The literature in conservation biology has focused much attention on reserve site selec-tion (Margules, Nicholls, and Pressey, 1988; Pressey et al., 1993). Conservation biolo-gists often frame the selection of reserve sites as covering the maximum number o