Landscape-Level Habitat Modeling and Mapping for Conservation Planning: Use of GAP Analysis

• Author: Wayne Myers, Joseph Bishop, and Robert Brooks
• Pages: 113-126

Chapter 9

Landscape-Level Habitat Modeling

and Mapping for Conservation

Planning: Use of GAP Analysis

by Wayne Myers, Joseph Bishop, and Robert Brooks

I. Introduction

The challenge of conducting environmental assessments in support of plan-

ning for conservation of biodiversity is formidable. In fact, biodiversity is it-

self intriguingly nebulous. It is intrinsically an area-based concern, but it is

also necessarily a temporal matter. The picture literally changes moment by

moment at a micro scale, and setting the scope at the entire taxonomic spec-

trum is beyond contemporary technological capacity. At the largest (earth)

scale, biodiversity is a losing proposition since extinctions are virtually cer-

tain to outpace the rate at which new species emerge and are classified. It be-

comes necessary to adopt expedients in order to make reasonable progress,

and these expedients may include knowledge-based speculation in a formal-

ized manner.

Gap analysis1is an expedient approach that has been applied extensively

in the United States, as well as influencing biodiversity planning efforts else-

where. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)2has established the Gap

Analysis Program (GAP) to utilize gap analysis on a state and regional basis

with the objective of identifying gaps in conservation planning and cover-

age. Simply stated, GAP analysis utilizes computerized geographic infor-

mation systems (GIS) to create a series of overlay maps of features relevant

to biodiversity-based conservation. In general, the process involves correla-

tion for two sets of criteria identifying land areas according to: (1) the ele-

113

1. J. Michael Scott et al., Gap Analysis: A Geographic Approach to Protection of

Biological Diversity,Wildlife Monographs (No. 123, 1993).

2. Pennsylvania GAP Analysis Project research was conducted under sponsor-

ship of USGS Cooperative Agreement No. 14-16-0009-1548, Research Work

Order No. 40. See Myers et al.,infra note 5.