The Zonation approach to spatial prioritization (THINK NATURE CONCEPT NOTE #4B)

Executive summary. Many decisions are spatial, answering questions about where to do and where to not do things. They include those around land use zoning, spatial targeting of new construction, and spatial targeting of nature-friendly actions. Spatial decisions are especially relevant in the context of biodiversity, because species and habitat types are tied to locations that have environmental conditions suitable for them. Spatial decisions can be made nationally, by regional authorities, by businesses and locally by individual people. Spatial prioritization is a sub-field of conservation biology that investigates spatial decisions broadly in the context of biodiversity. It can integrate and balance the distributions of thousands of species, habitat types, ecosystem services, pressures, costs, and administrative constraints to answer questions around ecologically well-informed land use planning or ecological impact avoidance in project design. Zonation is high-capacity software for spatial prioritization. It employs special mathematical and computational techniques in the development of balanced prioritization for data that is high dimensional both in terms of biodiversity and spatial resolution. This concept note outlines the uses, core computational principles, capabilities, and limitations of Zonation. Japanese examples of Zonation outputs are shown for illustration. This text is #4B in Think Nature’s series of concept notes provided as a public service for those interested in understanding the interaction of people and biodiversity. Note #4 discussed spatial analyses in general and this one expands on the topic with further detail about Zonation. ©︎ 2025 Think Nature Inc.