Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Driven by the United Nations' Global Biodiversity Framework's Target 3 to protect 30% of the planet by 2030, and Canada's national target of `30 by 2030', this decade should see increased efforts to conserve Earth's remaining intact ecosystems through large expansions in both Protected Areas and Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures. The research program outlined for this DG period strives to inform these national and international efforts while innovating across major themes relating to the ecology of human-dominated environments. My HQP and I will use novel methods and recently available datasets to develop high resolution temporally-intercomparable maps of ecosystem intactness globally (Project 1, 2 MSc), and for a critical case study on Vancouver Island, Canada we will use mixed methods (drone and plane LIDAR with satellite remote sensing and ground sampling) to map very high resolution direct indices of forest integrity and old growth attributes (Project 2, 1 PhD). We will then go on to determine how change in ecosystem intactness drives a range of biodiversity responses for species globally (Project 3 and 4, 1 PhD and 2 x MSc) and evaluate of how area-based conservation (most notably Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECM)) can mitigate negative biodiversity impacts (1 PhD). Major innovations in this work will be the use of time series datasets instead of space for time substitutions, and a consideration of species functional traits instead of simple measures of species richness. Using a never before available dataset on the location of OECMs, this work will build off recent studies highlighting the conservation importance of Indigenously managed lands alongside government protected areas. This work builds directly of the most recent advances myself and my HQP have made under the previous DG period, with projects that will break new ground with the potential for strong scientific and applied impacts. Overall, this research program addresses critical knowledge gaps to understanding the trends and values of intact ecosystems and the effectiveness of area-based conservation strategies. The outcomes of this work will provide timely guidance to conservation policy and efforts in Canada and abroad as our nation and others work toward achieving 30% protection. My group is well positioned to enable the transfer of this knowledge to applied partners through our work developing tools that identify conservation priorities in Canada and in direct partnership with the United Nations, to countries around the world (see `most significant contributions'). Our findings will also have applications in a range of macro-ecological analyses, such as investigations of the distributional and behavioural changes in species sensitive to human disturbance. Finally, our new maps of ecosystem intactness will provide the Canadian government with a spatially explicit tool to identify intact lands to meet its stated conservation goals.