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About the Authors:
Jocelyn L. Aycrigg
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: National Gap Analysis Program, Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, United States of America
Anne Davidson
Affiliation: National Gap Analysis Program, Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, United States of America
Leona K. Svancara
Affiliation: Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Moscow, Idaho, United States of America
Kevin J. Gergely
Affiliation: United States Geological Survey Gap Analysis Program, Boise, Idaho, United States of America
Alexa McKerrow
Affiliation: United States Geological Survey Gap Analysis Program, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America
J. Michael Scott
Affiliation: Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, United States of America
Introduction
Traditionally, a mix of opportunity, available resources, and agency-specific conservation priorities are the foundation upon which networks of protected areas are developed over time [1]–[4]. This has led to a protected areas network in the continental US cultivated for multiple purposes including protecting biological resources, such as vegetation communities [5]–[8]. Often, to respond to conservation issues, such as habitat loss, the protected areas network is expanded by establishing new protected areas or enlarging existing ones [9]–[13]. However, with increasing land-use intensification the opportunities for expanding such networks are dwindling [4], [14]. Furthermore, with the imminence of climate change along with increased loss and fragmentation of vegetation communities, the exigency of protecting areas that represent the full suite of vegetation communities and therefore the species found therein, has increased [15]–[17].
The conservation community has increasingly focused on landscape levels for national decision making, but the lack of relevant and consistent data at a national scale has been an impediment [18]–[20]. Most public land management agencies, even those with the broadest authorities to protect natural resources have yet to implement ecosystem-scale approaches, perhaps due to lack of relevant data [21], [22]. However, the impediment that once prevented a national-scale approach to protected areas management in the continental US has recently been overcome with the availability of national-level data for vegetation communities, classified to ecological systems [23], and a protected areas database for the US [24]. Ecological systems are groups of vegetation communities that occur together within similar physical environments and are influenced by similar ecological processes...