conservation impacts

Conservation planning, extinction risk, and protected-area design work from the Enquist Macroecology Lab

Conservation Impacts

The lab’s conservation work focuses on turning biodiversity observations, traits, and forecasting models into planning-ready evidence. That means linking large synthesis databases such as BIEN with climate scenarios, range information, and uncertainty analysis so conservation partners can compare options rather than rely on a single deterministic answer.

SPARC conservation planning map showing priority regions for protected-area design across the Americas
Decision-facing conservation planning: SPARC integrates biodiversity data, climate scenarios, and prioritization workflows to identify protected-area opportunities across the Americas.

Conservation Planning

We contribute to conservation planning by combining biodiversity data synthesis with scenario-based forecasting. This work asks where conservation investment can reduce risk most effectively under current and future climates, and how alternative land-use futures reshape those priorities.

Current planning applications include:

  • Spatial prioritization under climate change
  • Comparing protection, restoration, and working-landscape scenarios
  • Producing map-based summaries that partners can use in planning conversations

Extinction Risk

A major theme is identifying where climate change, habitat pressure, and limited range size interact to elevate risk. Rather than treating extinction risk as a static label, the lab’s work emphasizes sensitivity to assumptions, data coverage, and future scenario choice.

This includes:

  • Forecasting vulnerability for floras and clades with narrow climatic space
  • Identifying where climate action and land conservation together can reduce projected losses
  • Translating model outputs into risk summaries that can be scrutinized and updated as new data arrive

Protected Area Design And Selection

Protected areas are most effective when placement, representation, and climate resilience are considered together. Our work supports protected-area design by evaluating how current networks perform and where new protection or improved connectivity could yield the greatest gains for biodiversity persistence and ecosystem function.

Relevant questions include:

  • Which regions remain under-protected given projected climate exposure?
  • How well do current protected areas capture biodiversity and functional diversity?
  • Where can new protection or climate-informed redesign reduce long-term extinction risk?

Data And Decision Support

The analytical foundation for this work includes BIEN occurrence and trait data, taxonomic harmonization, spatial range products, climate layers, and uncertainty-aware forecasting. We aim to keep the decision surface transparent by reporting sensitivity to scenarios, data gaps, and model assumptions rather than collapsing that variation into a single headline number.

Selected Examples

  • SPARC: spatial prioritization for species conservation under climate change, with map products that support partner decision-making and protected-area conversations.
  • Tropical extinction risk: Hannah et al. 2020 showed that pairing climate action with 30% land conservation can sharply reduce projected tropical extinction risk.
  • Protected-area effectiveness: Duncanson et al. 2023 evaluated the effectiveness of global protected areas for climate-change mitigation.
  • Climate risk for cacti: Pillet et al. 2022 documented elevated extinction risk of cacti under climate change.

Where This Connects

This page sits between the lab’s broader research program and its resources: theory and synthesis feed forecasting, and forecasting feeds conservation planning. For collaboration examples and partner-facing initiatives, see collaborators.