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Lookup table to allow specialist users to identify why specific areas were selected as CBA or ESA and to identify appropriate management guidelines.

Copyright belows to CGS. Data captured by Holness 2009.

It is important that the users of the CBA and ESA layer can quickly and easily identify why a specific area was selected within the conservation plan. The use of MARXAN as an optimizing tool invariably means that selected planning units were prioritized on the basis of a range of underlying features found within the unit. One negative consequence of the methodology is that it is sometimes difficult to pin-point the specific feature that resulted in the selection of the planning unit, as all features present will be contributing to meeting targets. Nevertheless, it is important when dealing with development applications that as good an idea of possible of the specific features found at a site are known to the person scrutinizing the application. Therefore a simplified look-up table or layer was created to show at a glance what the major features present at a site are and hence contributed most to its selection. It should be emphasized that this table is designed to allow quick and easy understanding of the over-all plan and give a reasonably robust feature list for a site, and not a comprehensive listing of the specific features. The shapefile is designed to allow the user to select or query any polygon. The table has the following fields:

? CBA category: This gives the CBA category for the polygon. It indicates whether the polygon is a Formal Protected Area, a Conservation Area, a Critical Biodiversity Area or an Ecological Support Area.

? Objective: This field outlines the management objective for the land parcel. This relates to either maintaining ecological patterns or processes.

? Habitat: This field indicates areas where the remaining intact habitat within that planning unit is contributing significantly to targets. Habitats are indicated as contributing to best design if this was likely to be a major reason why the polygon was selected. Selected polygons (<50ha) with small amounts of intact habitat, which were not selected as threatened habitats were considered to be important from a habitat best design point of view.

? River: Priority river reaches are indicated. These are areas where developments should be carefully screened to ensure no major impact on the rivers and their riparian corridors are likely.

? Specials: This field indicates if threatened plant or mammal species are likely

to occur at the site. Polygons are indicated as “Potential threatened plant species” or “Potential Riverine rabbit habitat.

? Expert: These are areas identified within the various expert layers included in

the conservation plan. Polygons are flagged as having “Potential occurrence

of expert identified special feature” and this will relate to a feature such as a

quartz patch or a forest.

? PlanPriori: These areas are the sites that were identified in other conservation

plans as important. They are likely to include possible important habitats, for example those identified in the Leslie Hill Succulent Karoo Assessment.

? Catch: This indicate priority catchments from any of the underlying assessments, and these are areas where special attention needs to be given to avoiding major impacts on hydrological processes and aquatic features.

? Process: These are all the climate change process, corridor and linkage areas, important both for links within the district and to adjacent areas. These areas include potential climate refugia, and are flagged as “Maintain ecological processes and linkages especially for climate change”.

? Wetland_1: These are sites with identified wetlands.

? Threatened: These are threatened habitats identified at in either the national

assessment or within the Little Karoo plan.

? Unfrag: These are important unfragmented areas which potentially contribute

significantly to the climate change resilience of the area. Developments which

result in these areas being fragmented should be avoided.

SANS 1878

FGDC-STD-001-1998