Gap analysis: Concepts, methods, and recent results

Landscape Ecology
By:

Links

Abstract

Rapid progress is being made in the conceptual, technical, and organizational requirements for generating synoptic multi-scale views of the earth's surface and its biological content. Using the spatially comprehensive data that are now available, researchers, land managers, and land-use planners can, for the first time, quantitatively place landscape units - from general categories such as 'Forests' or 'Cold-Deciduous Shrubland Formation' to more categories such as 'Picea glauca-Abies balsamea-Populus spp. Forest Alliance' - in their large-area contexts. The National Gap Analysis Program (GAP) has developed the technical and organizational capabilities necessary for the regular production and analysis of such information. This paper provides a brief overview of concepts and methods as well as some recent results from the GAP projects. Clearly, new frameworks for biogeographic information and organizational cooperation are needed if we are to have any hope of documenting the full range of species occurrences and ecological processes in ways meaningful to their management. The GAP experience provides one model for achieving these new frameworks.
Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Gap analysis: Concepts, methods, and recent results
Series title Landscape Ecology
DOI 10.1023/A:1008184408300
Volume 15
Issue 1
Year Published 2000
Language English
Larger Work Type Article
Larger Work Subtype Journal Article
Larger Work Title Landscape Ecology
First page 5
Last page 20
Google Analytic Metrics Metrics page
Additional publication details