Maile Neel
Conservation on Multiple Levels of Biological Diversity Using Community Based Reserve Selection Approaches
Abstract
A stated goal of the Nature Conservancy is to conserve all viable native species and community types in portfolios of sites within ecoregions. Accomplishing this goal requires capturing many types of diversity in conserved areas, as well as maintaining processes that will increase probabilities of persistence of that diversity in the future. It is increasingly argued that conservation efforts representing community- or landscape-level diversity elements are most likely to be successful at conserving biological diversity in general. However, the potential for conservation at community and landscape levels to simultaneously represent multiple levels or types of diversity is not well tested. Their success depends on both spatial structuring of different types of diversity and amount of area included in reserves (with diversity increasing as the area conserved increases). The objectives of this research are to use computer-based methods to 1) evaluate how well multiple levels of biological diversity are conserved by reserve selection strategies applied to vegetation communities over a range of conservation intensities (i.e., proportion of available area protected); 2) evaluate whether models designed to rank biodiversity value of sites based on landscape characteristics increase the amount of diversity conserved or improve the landscape context of reserves over networks selected using community types alone; and 3) evaluate the proportion of the landscape necessary to reliably conserve multiple levels of diversity when vegetation communities are the conservation targets.
Mentors
Dr. Kevin McGarigal through the University of Massachusetts Department of Natural Resource Conservation
Undergraduate Education
B.S. Environmental Biology and Conservation, Humboldt State University, 1985
Graduate Education
M.A. Biology, University of California, 1994
Ph.D. Botany, University of California, Riverside, 2000. "The Structure of Diversity: Implications for Reserve Design."
Publications
Neel, M. C., K. McGarigal, and S. Cushman. Evaluation of Class-Level Landscape Structure Metrics Across Gradients of Area and Aggregation in Neutral Landscapes. In Review, Landscape Ecology.
Cushman, S., K. McGarigal, and M. C. Neel. Parsimony in Landscape Metrics: Importance, Universality, and Consistency. In review, Landscape Ecology. Other Publications
Neel, M. C., and M. P. Cummings. Genetic Consequences of Ecological Reserve Design Guidelines: An Empirical Investigation. In Press, Conservation Genetics.
Neel, M. C., and N. C. Ellstrand. Conservation of Genetic Diversity in the endangered plant Eriogonum ovalifolium var. vineum (Polygonaceae). In Press, Conservation Genetics.
Neel, M. C., and M. P. Cummings. 2003. Effectiveness of Conservation Targets in Capturing Genetic Diversity. Conservation Biology 17:219-229.
Current Title and Affiliation
Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park
