Developing a Conservation Strategy for Suburban
Parks

                                                                                                                                  
20 pts total

You are working with a town to develop a conservation strategy
for parks (tracts) of protected land in a suburban area (parks
A–G). These seven areas are depicted in Figure 1. Each square in
the grid indicates an area of 1 km². Refer to Figure 1
to familiarize yourself with the key aspects of the protected
areas.

1. a) Determine the overall size of each park (in
km²) and add the data to Column 2 (Park Size) of Table
1.

b) Based on the total area, what percent of the available land
is currently protected?___________

c) Based solely on the size of each park, which park would you
expect to have the highest species richness?
Why?______________________________________________________

d) Based solely on size and shape of each park, which park would
you expect would have the most potential for preserving viable
populations of a threatened species? Why?_____________________

2. Suppose the parks are susceptible to edge effects in the form
of increased air temperature. Air temperature penetrates 1
km into the parks. Areas of the park that are more than 1
km from an edge are unaffected, and air temperature does not
increase in those areas.

a) Using Figure 1, create a new figure (this will be referred to
as Figure 2) indicating the locations within each of the parks that
would be affected by edge effects.

b) Summarize how this edge effect would affect each of the parks
(A–G) by filling in columns 3 and 4 on Table 1. Based on the size
(km²) of each park and the edge effects you sketched for
Figure 2, determine for each park: 1) the area affected by
increased air temperatures (in km²), and 2), based on
the total area of each park and the area that would be affected by
edge effects, the (%) of each park area affected by edge
effect.

c) Which park would be most affected by edge effects in terms of
total area affected?___________ Which park would be most affected
by edge effects in terms of percent of park area?___________ Which
park would be least affected by edge effects in terms of
total area affected? ____________

Which park would be least affected by edge effects in
terms of percent of park area?____________