DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4b8gthtb9
title: Data From: Conservation planning in an uncertain climate: identifying projects that remain valuable and feasible across future scenarios

description: Conservation actors face the challenge of allocating limited resources
 despite uncertainty about future climate. A key goal is to minimize the
 potential for negative outcomes under future scenarios. Thus, we
 address a global conservation challenge: how to allocate
 conservation investments given high uncertainty about future climate
 conditions. To that end, we present a method for identifying projects that
 remain valuable and feasible across climate scenarios and apply our
 framework to freshwater biodiversity conservation in the South-Central
 USA. We combine data from a recent high-resolution hydrologic planning
 tool and species distribution models to estimate the conservation
 feasibility and biodiversity value of river reaches below 38 major
 reservoirs in the Red River basin.We find that only 13% of sites have high
 conservation priority across all future climate scenarios and that spatial
 patterns of conservation priority largely reflect patterns of water
 availability and fish biodiversity.
description: This dataset is based on three separate works. First, downscaled
 climate projections from Dixon K.W., A.M. Wootten, M.J.
 Nath, J. Lanzante,  D.J. Adams-Smith, C.E. Whitlock, C.F. Gaitán, R.A.
 McPherson, 2020: South Central Climate Projections Evaluation Project
 (C-PrEP), South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, Norman,
 Oklahoma, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21429/12gk-dh47  Were used in a hydrologic planning model Sabzi, H. Z., Rezapour, S., Fovargue, R., Moreno, H., & Neeson, T. M. (2019). Strategic allocation of water conservation incentives to balance environmental flows and societal outcomes. <i>Ecological Engineering</i>, <i>127</i>, 160-169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2018.11.005 to obtain estimates of conservation feasibility, or how likely a freshwater conservation initiative would be implemented based on estimated tradeoffs between societal (i.e., municipal and agricultural uses), and environmental (i.e., environmental flow releases) water goals. Finally, the downscaled climate projections from Dixon et al. (2020) above were used to create species distribution models for a suite of fish in the Red River basin in: Gill, K. C., Fovargue, R. E., & Neeson, T. M. (2020). Hotspots of species loss do not vary across future climate scenarios in a drought‐prone river basin. <i>Ecology and Evolution</i>, <i>10</i>(17), 9200-9213. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6597 These species distribution models, combined with IUCN and NatureServe risk of endangerment categories were used to create a Biodiversity Value Index.
description: BVI_ConservationFeasibility.csv - Contains reservoir and climate
 scenario specific estimates of the Biodiversity Value Index and
 Conservation Feasibility and can be used to replicate Figures 5 &
 6 from the manuscript. BVI_rawdata_rinput.csv -
 Contains reservoir, species, and climate scenario specific estimates of
 fish species probability of occurrence from Gill et al. (2020) and the
 associated weights from IUCN and NatureServe risk of endangerment
 categories. This file is used for input in the BVI_calculation.R file to
 calculate the Biodiversity Value Index and replicate Figure 4a from the
 manuscript. BVI_Calculation.R - Used to calculate the
 Biodiversity Value Index described in the manuscript. Uses
 BVI_rawdata_rinput.csv as an input dataset.