Zonation

Zonation is a publicly available spatial conservation methods and software for ecologically based land use planning including decision support system for resource allocation. It can identify important areas for retaining habitat quality and connectivity for multiple species, ecosystems, indirectly aiming at long term persistence of biodiversity features. Zonation produces a balanced, complementary-based, priority ranking based on the occurrence levels of biodiversity features and web based cost-efficient solutions.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Tool category
  • Environmental impact assessment
  • Site identification
MSP stages
  • 4 Develop alternative management actions
  • 5 Evaluate alternative management actions
MSP users
  • Planners
  • Scientists
  • Authorities
Type of software Desktop
Compatible OS
  • Windows
  • Linux
Input data
  • Quantitative
  • Spatially explicit
Output data
  • Layer
  • Maps
  • Tables
  • Graphs
Organization C-BIG
Code accessibility The computational core of Zonation software is available on GitHub
Software license GNU General Public License (GPL)
Documentation Full user documentation
Tool community facilities Mailing list
Additional informations The documentation does not clearly explain how to use the zonation under Linux; Download link of the free software: http://cbig.it.helsinki.fi/; Email: ate.moilanen@helsinki.fi; Moilanen, A., Franco, A.M.A., Early, R., Fox, R., Wintle, B.A. and C.D. Thomas 2005. Prioritising multiple-use landscapes for conservation: methods for large multi-species planning problems. Proc. R. Soc. B, 272: 1885-1891. Moilanen, A. 2007. Landscape zonation, benefit functions and target-based planning: Unifying reserve selection strategies. Biological Conservation, 134: 571-579. Leathwick, J.R., Moilanen, A., Ferrier, S. and K. Julian. 2010. Complementarity-based conservation prioritization using a community classification, and its application to riverine ecosystems. Biological Conservation, 143, 984-991. Moilanen, A., Anderson, B.J., Eigenbrod, F., Heinemeyer, A., Roy, D.B., Gillings, S., Armsworth, P.R., Gaston, K.J., and C.D. Thomas. 2011. Balancing alternative land uses in conservation prioritization. Ecological Applications, 21: 1419-1426. Moilanen, A. and A. Arponen. 2011. Administrative regions in conservation: balancing local and global priorities in spatial planning. Biological Conservation, 144: 1719-1725. Moilanen, A., Leathwick, J.R. and J.M. Quinn. 2011. Spatial prioritization of conservation management. Cons. Lett., 4: 383-393. Lehtomäki, J. and A. Moilanen 2013. Methods and workflow for spatial conservation prioritization using Zonation. Environmental Modelling & Software 47, 128-137.
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