Carbon and Biodiversity Mapping and Assessment for the Islands Trust Area

Extracted text (beginning)

Page 1 of 14 
 
 
Carbon and Biodiversity Mapping and Assessment for the 
Islands Trust Area 
 
 
March 23, 2014 
 
Prepared by: Richard Schuster 
(mail@richard-schuster.com) 
 
  

Page 2 of 14 
 
Executive Summary 
This report first presents the contribution of the Islands Trust (IT) area to conservation in 
the Coastal Douglas-f ir  (CDF) Biogeoclimatic zone. It then details each of the data products that 
were used for the analysis of the Islands Trust area importance. Specifically, these are: i) 
predictive maps of standing carbon and carbon sequestration potential for the IT and CDF areas, 
ii) bird community diversity maps based on bird point counts and predictive distribution models, 
and iii) assessed property values for the IT and CDF region. Using these empirical data and 
predictive model results this report found that native bird community diversity is 39% higher in 
the Islands Trust (IT) area than in non IT parts of the CDF. Further, there is 82% more standing 
carbon and 43% higher carbon sequestration potential in the IT area than in non IT parts of the 
CDF . This report further investigated the cost  -effectiveness of purchasing land for conservation 
in the CDF by  protecting 20% of the total native bird community diversity. Two approaches 
were investigated; one where land was purchased outright and one where land purchase costs 
were offset by selling forest carbon credits. Both approaches point out the importance of the 
Islands Trust area to conservation in the CDF region. A 78% percent higher proportion of bird 
community diversity was protected in the IT area as compared to non IT parts of the CDF. A 
102% higher proportion of standing carbon and 74% higher carbon sequestration potential was 
located in the IT area as compared to the non IT parts of the CDF. Finally, the area to be reserved 
was 57% higher in the IT area as compared to non IT parts of the CDF, when taking into account 
the proportion of the total CDF area that is in the IT area (33%) and non IT parts (67%).
 
 
 
  

Page 3 of 14 
 
Part 1. Contributions of the Islands Trust area to conservation in 
the Coastal Douglas-fir Biogeoclimatic zone
 
 
The Islands Trust area contributes disproportionally to the conservation of the bird 
community diversity, standing carbon, and carbon sequestration potential within the Coastal 
Douglas-fir area (Table 1). The IT area represents 33.2% of the CDF and includes 40.9% of the 
total    bird community diversity in the region. This represents a 38.6% higher contribution to bird 
community diversity that non IT areas in the region. An even higher contribution was realized 
with standing carbon on the landscape, where 47.3% of the total carbon in the CDF area included 
here is located in the Islands Trust area. This represents 81.6% more standing carbon in the 
Islands Trust area as compared to non IT areas. The contribution of the Islands Trust area to 
carbon sequestration potential is also high with 41.4% of total ca

First 3,000 characters. Open the original for the whole document.