The aim of this approach is to increase the retention time of species in reserves and increase the persistence of species and the ecological processes that maintain those species in space and time. Identification of key biological features is essentially identification of speciose groups of plants, endemic rich or range restricted groups or species rich habitats. Keystone ecological processes include processes such as pollination or dispersal. The assessment of threat for conservation planning is fundamental. Threats are any anthropogenic action that will impact in the maintenance of key biological features.
Threats allow one to objectively prioritize conservation action.
Threats also help identify key biological components that do no fall into the above class such as habitats targeted for transformation. Identification of remotely mappable surrogates for point species data. This is an important component of my research as reserve design has been inherently biased by incomplete and spatially auto correlated point data for species diversity. This work involves deriving models for diversity that use objectively mapped surrogates for species diversity. Such surrogates may be geology, aspect, altitude, etc.