Conservation Prioritization for California Landbirds

Zonation is a spatial conservation planning software tool that can take into account multiple species to create a hierarchical prioritization of the landscape. This is in contrast to other spatial conservation planning tools which may require predefined conservation targets or areas. Here, we used 199 California landbirds along with Zonation's "core-area" algorithm to prioritize the California landscape. Species were weighted according to the California Bird Species of Special Concern criteria and probability of occurrence was discounted by distribution model and climate model uncertainty surfaces. The dataset provides priority areas for "current" conditions (recent historic 1970-2000), for a "future" projected climate (2038-2070 under using two GCMs and the A2 emission scenario), and for a combination of current and future conditions.