Identifying regional landscapes for conservation planning: a case study from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The application of landscape ecology in conservation biology has rarely occ urred in the context of defined landscapes. Conservation planning has focus sed on representation of species diversity patterns and assumed that ecosys tems, landscapes and their associated processes will be equally protected. The long-term persistence of biodiversity in the face of land transformatio ns and global change requires the representation and retention of all eleme nts of biodiversity. This biodiversity includes landscapes, and the landsca pe structure and processes that maintain patterns of biodiversity. We devel oped a method of classifying landscapes for the KwaZulu-Natal province of S outh Africa. The process entailed the use of 1 km(2) grid data from climate and terrain databases. Principal components analysis coupled with a cluste r classification method and spatial overlay techniques were used to identif y two hierarchical levels of landscapes. Validation analysis showed that la ndscapes are identifiable with a classification accuracy of 86.8%. The deri ved landscapes can be combined separately with data on vegetation and soil to describe landscape ecosystems that potentially differ in species composi tion, successional dynamics, and potential productivity. The surrogate use of the landscapes in conjunction with other strategic data, for the identif ication of priority conservation areas, is demonstrated. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.