DOI: 10.5061/dryad.djh9w0vz1
title: Data from: The value of time-series data for conservation planning

description: Protected areas (PAs) are increasingly being used worldwide for the
 conservation and management of wildlife. Systematic conservation planning
 (SCP) aims at ensuring biodiversity persistence while minimizing the
 threats faced by the species and/or the economic costs related to
 protection. To account for spatio-temporal interactions between species
 and human threats, conservation planning for mobile wildlife requires
 time-series data derived from monitoring of species and human threats, a
 process that is costly and technically challenging. Therefore, assessments
 of the monitoring period needed to ensure sufficient data input in the
 design of efficient, adequate and representative networks of PAs are
 crucial. We demonstrated the value of time-series data in conservation
 planning by implementing SCP and data from different monitoring periods to
 identify priority conservation areas for highly mobile marine megafauna
 accounting for their main threat: commercial fishing. Two analyses of ten
 reserve-design scenarios each, replicated as many times as the data
 composing each scenario permitted were run in Marxan. The best solutions
 of the planning scenarios were statistically compared using the Cohen`s
 Kappa test. We also assessed differences in spatial similarity among and
 within scenarios using the Wilcoxon non-parametric test and a non-metric
 multidimensional scaling analysis. Finally, we compared the necessary cost
 and the area selected for each scenario. Our study highlights the
 importance of time-series ecological and socioeconomic data for the robust
 selection of priority conservation areas. The results revealed different
 thresholds of the minimum temporal data required to design efficient
 networks of PAs for highly mobile species, demonstrating that the
 incorporation of data covering longer periods to the scenarios produce a
 more robust selection of priority conservation areas. Conservation plans
 using data covering less than three years were missing important priority
 areas. Synthesis and applications. We provide a method for estimating the
 minimum number of years of monitoring required to design efficient
 networks of protected areas that ensure the persistence of highly mobile
 species such as cetaceans and seabirds. This method can be used within an
 adaptive management framework to evaluate whether a network of PAs
 performs as planned, and to test whether management strategies should be
 altered or adjusted in response to local and global changes.
description: Species spatial distribution and abundance over a ten-year period
 (2007-2016) were obtained from (García-Barón et al., 2020). In this work,
 the yearly species spatial density was estimated based on sightings data
 collected during spring (March-April) within the PELACUS monitoring
 platform (Saavedra et al., 2018). Species data were analysed by means of
 Generalized Additive Models following the Information-Theoretic framework
 for the identification of the most important dynamic and static variables
 explaining the spatio-temporal patterns of the density of marine megafauna
 species. García-Barón, I., Santos, M. B., Saavedra, C., Astarloa, A., Valeiras, J., García-Barcelona, S., & Louzao, M. (2020). Essential ocean variables and high value biodiversity areas: targets for the conservation of marine megafauna. <i>Ecological Indicators</i>, <i>117</i>, 106504. Saavedra, C., Gerrodette, T., Louzao, M., Valeiras, J., García, S., Cerviño, S., … Santos, M. B. (2018). Assessing the environmental status of the short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) in North-western Spanish waters using abundance trends and safe removal limits. <i>Progress in Oceanography</i>, <i>166</i>, 66-75. doi: 10.1016/j.pocean.2017.08.006