Assessing sensitivity to climate change and drought variability of a sand dune endemic lizard

Bioclimatic models aimed assessing a species’ sensitivity to climate change incorporate mean shifts in climate variables; however the more acute threat to the persistence of species may result from increased frequency of extreme climatic events, including increased duration and severity of droughts. Here we assess climate-change sensitivity using niche modeling that unlike bioclimatic modeling incorporates both climate variables as well as other habitat features that constrain a species’ distribution. We analyzed the effects of potential increases in drought frequency for an endangered, sand dune-restricted lizard, a species restricted to a narrowly occurring substrate and so unable to move up-slope or pole-ward to track climate shifts. Our niche modeling results indicated only minor losses to the area of suitable niche space at lower levels of modeled climate change; at the most severe climate shifts we tested the area of suitable niche space reduced by slightly more than 50%. However, extrapolating the potential impacts of reduced rainfall on drought periodicity and intensity showed a more immediate and acute impact on the lizard’s populations. Drought duration projections coupled with landscape fragmentation resulted in rapid losses of suitable niche space, beginning in the more arid portion of the lizard’s range and extending into more moderate climate areas. Although there is greater uncertainty associated with the impacts of climate change on drought periodicity than with shifts in mean conditions, our results show a greater potential for droughts to negatively impact species’ resilience to such changes.     

Regional climate change adaptation strategies for biodiversity conservation in a midcontinental region of North America

Scenario planning should be an effective tool for developing responses to climate change but will depend on ecological assessments of broad enough scope to support decision-making. Using climate projections from an ensemble of 16 models, we conducted an assessment of a midcontinental area of North America (Minnesota) based on a resistance, resilience, and facilitation framework. We assessed likely impacts and proposed options for eight landscape regions within the planning area. Climate change projections suggest that by 2069, average annual temperatures will increase 3 °C with a slight increase in precipitation (6%). Analogous climate locales currently prevail 400–500 km SSW. Although the effects of climate change may be resisted through intensive management of invasive species, herbivores, and disturbance regimes, conservation practices need to shift to facilitation and resilience. Key resilience actions include providing buffers for small reserves, expanding reserves that lack adequate environmental heterogeneity, prioritizing protection of likely climate refuges, and managing forests for multi-species and multi-aged stands. Modifying restoration practices to rely on seeding (not plants), enlarge seed zones, and include common species from nearby southerly or drier locales is a logical low-risk facilitation strategy. Monitoring “trailing edge” populations of rare species should be a high conservation priority to support decision-making related to assisted colonization. Ecological assessments that consider resistance, resilience, and facilitation actions during scenario planning is a productive first step towards effective climate change planning for biodiversity with broad applicability to many regions of the world.     

Will climate change reduce the efficacy of protected areas for amphibian conservation in Italy?

Amphibians are an important and imperiled component of biodiversity. In this study we analyze the efficacy of Italian reserve network for protecting multiple amphibian species in a climate change scenario, considering both nationally designated areas and Natura 2000 sites. Our approach is based on ensemble niche modeling estimate of potential range shift under two carbon emission scenarios (A1FI and B1) and two dispersal assumptions. The predicted distributions were used to perform gap and irreplaceability analyses. Our findings show that the current Italian reserve network incompletely represents current amphibian diversity and its geographic pattern. The combination of the nationally designated protected areas and the Natura 2000 sites improves current representation of amphibians, but conservation targets based on geographic range extent are achieved for only 40% of species. Under the future scenarios, Natura 2000 sites become a crucial component of the protected areas system. Nonetheless, we predict that climate change decreases for many species the amount of suitable range falling into reserves, regardless of our assumptions about dispersal. We identify some currently unprotected areas that have high irreplaceability scores for species conservation and that maintain their importance under all the future scenarios we considered. We recommend designation of new reserves in these areas to help guarantee long-term amphibian conservation.     

Habitat suitability, threats and conservation of isolated populations of the smooth snake (Coronella austriaca) in the southern Iberian Peninsula

During the Pleistocene, climatic fluctuations due to glacial and interglacial periods greatly modified the distribution of boreal organisms. One direct effect of these distribution shifts is that, along the southern edge of the range of some boreal species, populations persist only in isolated patches of suitable habitats, surrounded by less suitable areas. Isolated populations in marginal habitat are vulnerable to several threats, including climate change, anthropogenic threats, and stochastic events. We developed habitat-suitability models using Ecological Niche Factor Analysis for populations of the smooth snake, Coronella austriaca, at the southernmost limit of the species range. These models were based on historical and current records of occurrence, coupled with remote sensing data including elevation, slope, and climatic variables. Our results indicated that C. austriaca in the Iberian Peninsula occurred in areas associated with high slope and precipitation, low temperatures, and low variation in seasonal temperature and precipitation compared to areas of non-occurrence. At a broad scale, the areas classified as highly suitable for the species in the southern Iberian Peninsula were small and fragmented. At a local scale, extensive field work demonstrated that C. austriaca occurs in low densities in these areas. In addition, we detected several human-induced threats like habitat loss, favoured by temperature increase and rainfall reduction. Several life-history traits, such as dietary specialization and low frequency reproduction, also may contribute to the vulnerability of these populations to local extinctions. Although the most suitable southernmost areas are included in protected reserves, specific guidelines for management are needed to assess conservation needs.     

新疆植被动态格局及其对气候的时滞效应

为明确新疆不同植被类型对水热变化响应的滞后时间，对新疆植被活动及其与气候变化的响应进行分析，研究基于1982—2015年的新疆GIMMS NDVI（normalized difference vegetation index）数据集、CRU降水与气温数据集，采用Sen + Mann-Kendall趋势分析、时滞偏相关分析、GIS空间分析和数理统计等方法，给出了34 a新疆植被格局动态变化特征，以及植被NDVI与气候响应的关系，探讨不同植被类型对气候响应的时滞效应。结果表明：1）新疆地区植被分布呈现北疆高于南疆、西部高于东部的空间格局，34 a来，研究区植被整体上呈现“变绿”趋势，在环塔里木盆地绿洲和天山山脉北段NDVI显著增加，伊犁地区呈现退化趋势；2）在月尺度时间分辨率下，新疆有72%植被区域对降水的响应存在滞后性，平均滞后时间为1.1个月，有70%的植被区域对气温的响应存在滞后性，平均滞后时长1.4个月，植被与气候要素时滞偏相关系数越高的区域，响应速度越快，总体上看，新疆地区植被对降水更为敏感；3）不同类型植被与降水和气温的响应程度不同，在新疆地区降水是草甸、灌丛和针叶林的主要促进因子，气温对阔叶林的影响最强，不同植被与降水的时滞偏相关系数均高于气温，不同植被对气温的响应时间均长于降水。总体上看，新疆地区植被与降水的相关性更高，植被对降水的响应比气温更迅速。     

Adapting global conservation strategies to climate change at the European scale: The otter as a flagship species

Climate change has created the need for new strategies in conservation planning that account for the dynamics of factors threatening endangered species.Here we assessed climate change threat to the European otter, a flagship species for freshwater ecosystems, considering how current conservation areas will perform in preserving the species in a climatically changed future. We used an ensemble forecasting approach considering six modelling techniques applied to eleven subsets of otter occurrences across Europe. We performed a pseudo-independent and an internal evaluation of predictions. Future projections of species distribution were made considering the A2 and B2 scenarios for 2080 across three climate models: CCCMA-CGCM2, CSIRO-MK2 and HCCPR HADCM3. The current and the predicted otter distributions were used to identify priority areas for the conservation of the species, and overlapped to existing network of protected areas.Our projections show that climate change may profoundly reshuffle the otter’s potential distribution in Europe, with important differences between the two scenarios we considered. Overall, the priority areas for conservation of the otter in Europe appear to be unevenly covered by the existing network of protected areas, with the current conservation efforts being insufficient in most cases. For a better conservation, the existing protected areas should be integrated within a more general conservation and management strategy incorporating climate change projections. Due to the important role that the otter plays for freshwater habitats, our study further highlights the potential sensitivity of freshwater habitats in Europe to climate change.     

Potential effects of climate change on plant communities in three montane nature reserves in Scotland, UK

Mountain ecosystems are often identified as being particularly sensitive to climate change, however this has rarely been investigated at the scale of individual mountain ranges using local relationships between plants and climate. This study uses fine resolution data to assess the potential changes to internationally important Arctic-alpine plant communities in three national nature reserves in the Scottish Highlands, United Kingdom. Distribution models were created for 31 species, representing a range of community types. A relationship between distribution and temperature was found for all species. These models were aggregated to explore potential future changes to each community under two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warming scenarios for the 2080s. The results indicate that Arctic-alpine communities in these reserves could undergo substantial species turnover, even under the lower climate change scenario. For example, Racomitrium-Carex moss-heath, a distinctive community type of the British uplands, could lose suitable climate space as other communities spread uphill. These findings highlight the need to maintain these communities in an optimal condition in which they can be most resilient to such change, to monitor them for signals of change and to develop more flexible conservation policies which account for future changes in mountain protected areas.     

Effectiveness of protected areas in north-eastern New South Wales: recent trends in six measures

We applied six measures of effectiveness to recent decisions about additional conservation areas in north-eastern New South Wales. Three have been widely used previously: (1) number of conservation areas; (2) total extent of conservation areas; and (3) representativeness (the proportion of natural features such as forest types or animal species represented in conservation areas to some targeted level). The other measures were: (4) efficiency or representation bias (the extent to which some features are protected above target levels at the expense of others that remain poorly protected); (5) relative protection of vulnerable areas within public land (percentage protection of flat, fertile areas relative to that of steep and/or infertile areas); and (6) relative protection of vulnerable areas across all tenures (the correlation between the amount of protection given to features and their vulnerabilities to clearing). We applied the measures in two chronological comparisons: the reserve system in 1994, 1996 and 1997; and before and after the Interim Assessment Process of 1996 which involved negotiations over new reserves and extensive unreserved areas that were temporarily deferred from logging. Over the study period, despite expansion of formal conservation and progress towards quantitative conservation targets, gazetted reserves remained strongly biased to the steep and/or infertile parts of public lands. Both gazetted reserves and areas deferred from logging increased the bias in protection away from forest types most vulnerable to clearing and for which regional conservation targets had already been most compromised. Two major challenges for future conservation decisions in the region are common to conservation planning generally: (1) to focus protection within public tenure on habitats and species most vulnerable to threatening processes such as logging; and (2) to provide more effective conservation management on private lands where loss of native vegetation continues.     

Protected areas in climate space: What will the future bring?

Protected areas for conservation are intended to contain the environmental conditions that enable species and ecosystems to persist. The locations of such areas are fixed, but the environment within them may change, especially with climate change. To illustrate how multiple climate factors may change in relation to protection status, we used Principal Components Analysis to construct a climate space for California based on eight climate variables assessed at an 800-m resolution. We used projections of future climate derived from a downscaled regional climate model in conjunction with the IPCC SRES A2 scenario to assess how the climate space might shift under future conditions and to identify the combinations of conditions that may no longer occur in the state (disappearing climates) or that will be new to the state (novel climates). Disappearing climates, which were generally toward cooler and/or wetter extremes of the climate space, represented only 0.5% of California’s land area but occurred disproportionately more often in conservation areas that were fully protected. Novel climates (5.8% of California) also occurred disproportionately in fully protected areas; in most cases these climates were characterized by hotter and drier combinations with more seasonal precipitation. The disproportionate occurrence of both novel and disappearing future climates in currently protected areas may create challenges to conservation of the status quo, but such areas may also be “hotspots of opportunity” for responding to the extremes of climate change.     

Woody species diversity in temperate Andean forests: The need for new conservation strategies

Chile has more than half of the temperate forests in the southern hemisphere. These have been included among the most threatened eco-regions in the world, because of the high degree of endemism and presence of monotypic genera. In this study, we develop empirical models to investigate present and future spatial patterns of woody species richness in temperate forests in south-central Chile. Our aims are both to increase understanding of species richness patterns in such forests and to develop recommendations for forest conservation strategies. Our data were obtained at multiple spatial scales, including field sampling, climate, elevation and topography data, and land-cover and spectrally derived variables from satellite sensor imagery. Climatic and land-cover variables most effectively accounted for tree species richness variability, while only weak relationships were found between explanatory variables and shrub species richness. The best models were used to obtain prediction maps of tree species richness for 2050, using data from the Hadley Centre’s HadCM3 model. Current protected areas are located far from the areas of highest tree conservation value and our models suggest this trend will continue. We therefore suggest that current conservation strategies are insufficient, a trend likely to be repeated across many other areas. We propose the current network of protected areas should be increased, prioritizing sites of both current and future importance to increase the effectiveness of the national protected areas system. In this way, target sites for conservation can also be chosen to bring other benefits, such as improved water supply to populated areas.     

近12年广西植被覆盖与降水和气温的时空响应特征

植被是生态系统中比较活跃的成员,分析其与降水和气温之间年际动态变化特征,已经成为当前国内外研究生态环境的发展趋势。基于植被归一化（NDVI）数据和气象数据,以一元线性回归方法分析1999—2010年间植被变化趋势,同时通过相关分析和偏相关分析方法初步探讨12年NDVI与降水和气温之间的相关程度。结果表明:（1）广西植被覆盖变化趋势总体是良好的,桂南和桂西北植被覆盖变化趋势表现较显著,其他地区相对变化不显著。（2）广西主要植被类型中,显著增加的植被主要有稀疏灌丛、密集灌丛、常绿阔叶林和常绿针叶林,其他植被类型变化不显著。（3）研究区域内,降水对植被的响应相对气温对植被的响应较弱,相关强度呈由桂西南向桂东北递减的规律。（4）气温对整个研究区域的植被覆盖响应呈正相关,中部相关较强,而四周相对较弱。综上,植被覆盖与降水和气温的时空响应特征,与研究区域的气候变化和地形概况相一致。     

Potential impact of global climate change on forest distribution in Sri Lanka

The potential impact of climate change on forest distribution in Sri Lanka was evaluated. The Holdridge Life Zone Classification was used along with current climate and climate change scenarios derived from two general circulation models, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model and the Canadian Climate Centre Model, at a 0.5° × 0.5° resolution. Current and future distributions of life zones were mapped with a Geographic Information System. These maps were then used to calculate the extent of the impact areas for the climate change scenarios. The current distribution pattern of forest vegetation includes tropical very dry forest (6%), tropical dry forest (56%), and tropical wet forest (38%). Results obtained using the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model show an increase in tropical dry forest (8%) and decrease in tropical wet forest (2%). The Canadian Climate Centre Model scenario predicted an increase in tropical very dry forest (5%) and tropical dry forest (7%), and a decrease in tropical wet forest (11 %). Both models predicted a northward shift of tropical wet forest into areas currently occupied by tropical dry forest. The application of general circulation models such as the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model and the Canadian Climate Centre Model, as well as the Holdridge Life Zone Classification, to estimate the effect of climate change on Sri Lankan forests in this paper indicates that these methods are suitable as a tool for such investigations in Sri Lanka.     

Effects of climate change on insect defoliator population processes in Canada's boreal forest: Some plausible scenarios

Insect populations have a substantial impact on Canada's forest. They are a dominating disturbance factor and during outbreaks they can cause tree mortality over vast areas of forest. If the predicted climate changes take effect, the damage patterns caused by insects may be drastically altered, especially for the many insects whose occurrence in time and space is severely limited by climatic factors. This possibility substantially increases the uncertainties associated with the long-term planning of pest control requirements, with hazard rating models, with depletion forecasts, and with projections for the sustainability of future timber supplies. Moreover, because insect damage affects the rates of various processes in nutrient and biogeochemical cycling, potential changes in damage patterns can affect ecosystem resilience. This paper presents a number of plausible scenarios that describe how some key processes in the boreal forest's insect defoliator outbreak systems may respond to climate change. The spruce budworm,Choristoneura fumiferana Clem. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), is used as an illustrative case study throughout. The potential importance of phonological synchrony in the dynamical interactions between species is emphasised. It is argued that natural selection may be a particularly important process in the response of insects to climate change and that climate change may already be influencing some insect lifecycles. The importance of threshold effects, rare but extreme events, and transient dynamics is emphasised, and the inadequacy of ‘equilibrium’ models for forest:pest systems noted. We conclude by discussing approaches to developing forecasts of how one of the boreal forest's insect defoliator-based disturbance regimes, as a whole, might respond to climate change.     

Projecting the local impacts of climate change on a Central American montane avian community

Significant changes in the climates of Central America are expected over the next century. Lowland rainforests harbor high alpha diversity on local scales (<1 km²), yet montane landscapes often support higher beta diversity on 10-100 km² scales. Climate change will likely disrupt the altitudinal zonation of montane communities that produces such landscape diversity. Projections of biotic response to climate change have often used broad-scale modelling of geographical ranges, but understanding likely impacts on population viability is also necessary for anticipating local and global extinctions. We model species’ abundances and estimate range shifts for birds in the Tilarán Mountains of Costa Rica, asking whether projected changes in temperature and rainfall could be sufficient to imperil high-elevation endemics and whether these variables will likely impact communities similarly. We find that nearly half of 77 forest bird species can be expected to decline in the next century. Almost half of species projected to decline are endemic to Central America, and seven of eight species projected to become locally extinct are endemic to the highlands of Costa Rica and Panamá. Logistic-regression modelling of distributions and similarity in projections produced by temperature and rainfall models suggest that changes in both variables will be important. Although these projections are probably conservative because they do not explicitly incorporate biological or climate variable interactions, they provide a starting point for incorporating more realistic biological complexity into community-change models. Prudent conservation planning for tropical mountains should focus on regions with room for altitudinal reorganization of communities comprised of ecological specialists.     

1982—2015年中国植被NDVI时空变化特征及其驱动分析

在全球气候变化背景下,多数研究关注植被年际变化趋势及其对降水和气温的响应而忽略了辐射因子的影响。探究持续性和波动变化过程的空间分异特征和定量揭示不同植被类型对季节性多气候要素（降水、气温和辐射）响应规律需进一步深入,并识别植被退化人类活动影响区对中国生态环境保护具有重要意义。该研究基于AVHRR NDVI3g遥感数据、CCI全球土地覆被数据和ERA5-Land数据,采用多元线性回归模型和残差分析等方法,从区域和全国尺度上分析1982-2015年中国植被NDVI（Normalized Difference Vegetation Index）时空变化特征,研究其对季节性气候变化和人类活动的响应。研究结果表明：1）中国的植被变化在空间上具有明显的区域特征,呈现出自东南向西北递减的趋势,变化率范围为-0.016～0.029/a。2）根据Hurst指数分析,80.62%的植被处于持续稳定变化状态。草地和林地的变化趋势趋于不稳定,易受气候变化和人类活动的影响。3）准噶尔盆地、青藏高原以及内蒙古锡林郭勒盟等区域的植被NDVI与气温和太阳辐射呈负相关性,而在云贵高原、黄土高原南部、四川盆地等地区表现为正相关性。4）残差分析结果表明,干旱导致新疆准噶尔盆地和内蒙古中部等干旱区植被退化,而温度和辐射增加是促进东部沿海平原、黄土高原南部、四川盆地和云贵高原西南部等地区植被改善的主要原因。21世纪以来人类活动逐渐加强,包括黄土高原水土保持和退耕还林工程、阿拉善荒漠治理、沿海城市群和东北工业基地的建设等。具体表现为内蒙古阿拉善高原、黄土高原中西部和北部以及华南大部分地区植被改善,东北大、小兴安岭、长白山东部和长江三角洲地区植被退化。该研究对植被变化及其驱动因素的研究,可识别植被退化区,为将来生态修复工程的实施和生态文明建设提供理论依据,助力区域绿色可持续发展。     

Modeling potential changes of forest area in Thailand under climate change

The forest cover of Thailand has been characterized according to the Holdridge Life Zone Classification, a model that correlates climatic features with vegetation distribution. Six Holdridge life zone types of forest cover are found in Thailand: subtropical dry forest, subtropical moist forest, subtropical wet forest, tropical dry forest, tropical moist forest, and tropical wet forest. Climate change scenarios were simulated by three general circulation models: two United Kingdom Meteorological Office models (the low and high resolution versions) and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies model. These scenarios were used to simulate the effects of future climate change on Thai forests. The ratios of precipitation and the absolute values of temperature changes were incorporated into a baseline climate scenario from the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis. Under the climate change scenarios simulated by the three general circulation models, the subtropical dry forest could potentially disappear, and areas of tropical very dry forest would appear. In general, the area of subtropical life zone would decline from about 50% to 20%–12% of total cover, whereas the tropical life zone would expand its cover from 45% to 80%. All three general circulation model scenarios suggest that the tropical dry forest has the greatest potential to extend into the subtropical moist forest. This analysis suggests that global climate change would have a profound effect on the future distribution and health of Thai forests.     

Climate change and translocations: The potential to re-establish two regionally-extinct butterfly species in Britain

Climate change is causing many organisms to migrate to track climatically-suitable habitat. In many cases, this will happen naturally, but in others, human intervention may be necessary in the form of ‘assisted colonisation’. Species re-establishments in suitable parts of their historic ranges provide an opportunity to conserve some species and to test ideas about assisted colonisation. Here, bioclimatic models of the distributions of two extinct British butterflies, Aporia crataegi and Polyommatus semiargus, were used to investigate the potential for re-establishment in Britain. Generalised additive models and generalised linear models were created to describe the species’ European distributions for the period 1961–1990. All models projected the British climate during this period to be suitable for both species. Thirty-year climate projections for the periods 1991–2020 and 2021–2050, and for three climate change scenarios, were then put into the models to generate projections of climatic suitability throughout the 21st century. British climate was projected to remain highly suitable for A. crataegi, but to decline somewhat for P. semiargus. Southern and eastern Britain were found to be the areas most likely to support suitable climate. This difference between the species appeared to be due in part to decreasing summer rainfall in climate change projections, as this should only benefit A. crataegi. It is concluded that, with further study of habitat requirements, both species could be reintroduced to Britain as part of a long-term European conservation strategy.     

Conservation planning under climate change: Toward accounting for uncertainty in predicted species distributions to increase confidence in conservation investments in space and time

Climate warming challenges our approach to building systems of protected areas because it is likely to drive accelerating shifts in species distributions, and the projections of those future species distributions are uncertain. There are several important sources of uncertainty intrinsic to using species occurrence projections for reserve system design including uncertainty in the number of occurrences captured by any reserve selection solution, and uncertainty arising from the different approaches used to fit predictive models. Here we used the present and future predicted distributions of Iberian herptiles to analyze how dynamics and uncertainty in species distributions may affect decisions about resource allocation for conservation in space and time. We identified priority areas maximizing coverage of current and future (2020 and 2080) predicted distributions of 65 species, under “Mild” and “Severe” uncertainty. Next, we applied a return-on-investment analysis to quantify and make explicit trade-offs between investing in areas selected when optimizing for different times and with different uncertainty levels. Areas identified as important for conservation in every time frame and uncertainty level were the ones considered to be robust climate adaptation investments, and included chiefly already protected areas. Areas identified only under “Mild” uncertainty were considered good candidates for investment if extra resources are available and were mainly located in northern Iberia. However, areas selected only in the “Severe” uncertainty case should not be completely disregarded as they may become climatic refugia for some species. Our study provides an objective methodology to deliver “no regrets” conservation investments.     

Conservation assessment and prioritization of areas in Northeast India: Priorities for amphibians and reptiles

This study combines niche modeling and systematic area prioritization using distribution data for 131 species of amphibians and reptiles from Northeast India and Burma, with two objectives: (i) to evaluate the performance of the current conservation area network in Northeast India with respect to the representation of amphibians and reptiles, and (ii) to identify potential areas for expanding the current conservation area network. In a two-step protocol, maximum entropy niche modeling was used to project species’ potential geographic occurrences, and the resulting probabilistic distribution data were used to prioritize areas with algorithms that maximize the representation of all species in minimal total area. The results provided a critical assessment of conservation priorities in this data-deficient region, and indicate the utility of combining niche modeling with systematic area prioritization in such situations. Many areas that had been overlooked in previous assessments were identified. Although the existing protected areas were found to be inadequate for representation of amphibian and reptile diversity, the prioritization results show that by targeting a minimal representation of 5% of the current total area suitable for each species, the gaps can be filled with a relatively modest (0.41%) increase in the current total area covered by the network. Extended analyses were also performed to assess the effects of putatively rare species on reserve selection, which showed that the inclusion of these taxa can change the prioritization solutions significantly. The prioritization results also highlight areas of Northeast India that warrant attention from future surveys.     

Comparing the potential effectiveness of conservation planning approaches in central North Carolina, USA

We compared four approaches to conservation site selection to protect forest biodiversity in the Triangle Region of North Carolina, USA. Using biological inventory data and an inventory-based conservation plan as benchmarks, we evaluated the potential effectiveness of a focal species plan and three “simple” plans (large forested patches, close to wetlands and riparian areas, diverse forest types). Effectiveness was measured in three ways: the number of inventory elements captured at least once by the plan (representation), the total number of inventory elements captured (completeness), and the proportion of land in the inventory-based plan included (overlap). We further examined the potential effectiveness of the simple plans by calculating their overlap with land identified by the focal species approach. The simple and focal species plans did not differ markedly in terms of representation, but diverged when completeness and overlap were considered. Although representation rates for all four plans were relatively high, lower rates for completeness and overlap raise concerns about long-term viability. The simple plans did not identify the same lands as the focal species plan, and are thus unlikely to provide appropriate habitat for the focal species. Each approach we tested failed to capture some subset of species and communities, highlighting the importance of explicit conservation targets and consideration of ecological processes. Forced to act quickly and with little data, our findings suggest using initially a set of complementary simple plans, each focused on a different habitat type. This should be considered a stopgap measure, however, while more sophisticated plans are constructed, defining explicit conservation targets and considering ecological processes.