Identify riverine species, habitats, and eco systems and species not adequately represented (i.e., gaps) in the matrix of conservation lands in Missouri.
Provide spatially explicit data that could be used by natural resource professionals, legislators, and the public to make more informed decisions for prioritizing opportunities to fill these conservation gaps and to devise strategic approaches for developing effective long-term biodiversity conservation plans.
As a pilot project for a national program, we also had the goal of developing a broadly applicable gap analysis methodology. We addressed this goal by ensuring that we utilized nationally standardized and available geospatial data wherever possible and also by devising a flexible conservation assessment methodology, which can accommodate the differences in data availability (e.g., biological) that exists among states across the United States.
