SecSel, a new software tool for conservation prioritization that is applicable to ordinal-scale data for multiple biodiversity features

RESEARCH ARTICLE SecSel, a new software tool for conservation prioritization that is applicable to ordinal-scale data for multiple biodiversity features Takenaka Akio, Oguma Hiroyuki, Amagai Yukihiro¤, Ishihama FumikoID* National Institute for Environmental Studies, Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan ¤ Current address: Shiretoko Nature Foundation, Iwabetsu, Shari, Hokkaido, Japan * ishihama@nies.go.jp Abstract SecSel, a protected-area prioritization tool, has been developed to help design areas that efficiently protect multiple features, including conservation of biodiversity and use of ecosys- tem services. The prioritization by SecSel is based on evaluation of the local units of each feature. The evaluation metrics should be quantitative but need not be ratio scale. The mini- mum requirement of the input data is that they are ordinal. The conservation target is the number of local units with high values of each feature to be protected in the area. SecSel can handle conflicts among features, including conflicts between conservation and utiliza- tion of land or specific ecosystem functions. Before the selection procedure, one of a con- flicting pair of features in a site is discarded. That decision is based on the dispensability of the local unit to fulfilling the conservation target of each feature. SecSel also considers the cost of including each site in the protected area and the compactness of the area in terms of total boundary length or the distance to the nearest site. To demonstrate the functionality of

Secsel, we used it to design land use in an alpine region of northern Japan where conserva- tion of alpine vegetation and its recreational use are important considerations. Introduction Prioritization of conservation areas is one of the major conundrums in conservation ecology [1–3]. Various methods have been proposed for the prioritization of local conservation units and the design of regional conservation areas [3–6]. Appropriate design tools are chosen on the basis of available data and the purposes of the prioritization analysis. When detailed data are available, the protected area can be designed based on a quantitative evaluation of conservation effects. With less informative data, the eval- uation of conservation effects is inevitably less quantitative. Binary presence-absence data for organisms, for example, do not include the quality of local populations. Inclusion of any local population is considered to contribute equally to the conservation of target species. Both of the widely used conservation prioritization tools, Marxan [5] and Zonation [4], require ratio-type evaluation data for biodiversity features, which can be summed and PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247737 July 23, 2021 1 / 19 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Akio T, Hiroyuki O, Yukihiro A, Fumiko I (2021) SecSel, a new software tool for conservation prioritization that is applicable to ordinal-scale data for multiple biodiversity features. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0247737. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0247737

Editor: Lalit Kumar Sharma, Zoological Survey of India, INDIA Received: February 11, 2021 Accepted: July 12, 2021 Published: July 23, 2021 Copyright: © 2021 Akio et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from the URLs below. Source code for SecSel (Python package) http://www.nies.go.jp/biology/ en/data/tool/secsel/index.html Vegetation data Biodiversity Center of Japan Ministry of the Environment. Report of Vegetation Survey on 6th National Basic Survey on Natural Environment http://www.biodic.go.jp/ne_research_e.html#id01. Funding: A.T. and F.I. were supported by the Harmonization with Nature Research Program in