track2KBA: An R package for identifying important sites for biodiversity from tracking data

Beal, Martin, Oppel, Steffen, Handley, Jonathan, Pearmain, Elizabeth J., Morera-Pujol, Virginia, Carneiro, Ana P. B., Davies, Tammy E., Phillips, Richard A., Taylor, Philip R., Miller, Mark G. R., Franco, Aldina M. A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6055-7378, Catry, Inês, Patrício, Ana R., Regalla, Aissa, Staniland, Iain, Boyd, Charlotte, Catry, Paulo and Dias, Maria P. (2021) track2KBA: An R package for identifying important sites for biodiversity from tracking data. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 12 (12). pp. 2372-2378. ISSN 2041-210X

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Abstract

Identifying important sites for biodiversity is vital for conservation and management. However, there is a lack of accessible, easily applied tools that enable practitioners to delineate important sites for highly mobile species using established criteria. We introduce the R package ‘track2KBA’, a tool to identify important sites at the population level using tracking data from individual animals based on three key steps: (a) identifying individual core areas, (b) assessing population-level representativeness of the sample and (c) quantifying spatial overlap among individuals and scaling up to the population. We describe package functionality and exemplify its application using tracking data from three taxa in contrasting environments: a seal, a marine turtle and a migratory land bird. This tool facilitates the delineation of sites of ecological relevance for diverse taxa and provides output useful for assessing their importance to a population or species, as in the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) Standard. As such, ‘track2KBA’ can contribute directly to conservation planning at global and regional levels.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Acknowledgements: Thanks to Ben Lascelles and the participants of a workshop in Chizé in 2009, which was a major contribution to developing these methods. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska‐Curie grant agreement No 766417. This communication reflects only the authors' views, and the Research Executive Agency of the European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. Further funding included: grants to MARE (UIDB/04292/2020 and UIDP/04292/2020) by FCT, Portugal, funding for stork tracking came from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (NE/K006312/1), the British Trust for Ornithology, (BTO) British Ornithological Union and by the FEDER Funds through the Operational Competitiveness Factors Program — COMPETE and by National Funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of the project POCI‐01‐0145‐FEDER‐028176. I.C. was funded by FCT through contract DL57/2016/CP1440/CT0023. The MAVA Foundation funded tracking of sea turtles through various projects granted to IBAP – Guinea‐Bissau.
Uncontrolled Keywords: important bird and biodiversity areas,animal movement,biologging,key biodiversity areas,protected areas,site-based conservation,utilization distribution,ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics,ecological modelling ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Biology
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 08 Sep 2021 02:01
Last Modified: 20 Mar 2023 08:35
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/81330
DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.13713

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