Identifying conservation priorities and assessing impacts and trade‐offs of potential future development in the Lower Hunter Valley in New South Wales. ISBN: 978‐07340‐5140‐0 (PDF) Hub Research Theme: 4.4 Regional Sustainability Plans (Hunter) Enquiries to: [email protected] © The University of Melbourne This work is copyright. It may be produced in whole or in part for study or training purposes subject to the inclusion of an acknowledgement of the source. It is not intended for commercial sale or use. Reproduction for other purposes other than those listed above requires the written permission from the authors. For permission to reproduce any part of this document, please approach the authors. Please cite the report as follows: Kujala H, Whitehead AL & Wintle BA (2015) Identifying conservation priorities and assessing impacts and trade‐offs of potential future development in the Lower Hunter Valley in New South Wales. The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria. Pp. 100 Appendices Appendix 1. Individual results for species distributions modelled using Maxent. ..................... 4 Table 1. Mean results from MaxEnt models for 36 amphibians within the LHSA region. ........... 4 Table 2. Mean results from MaxEnt models for 292 birds within the LHSA region. .................... 6 Table 3. Mean results from MaxEnt models for 61 mammals within the LHSA region. ............ 20 Table 4. Mean results from MaxEnt models for 131 plants within the LHSA region. ................ 23 Table 5. Mean results from MaxEnt models for 56 reptiles within the LHSA region. ................ 30 Table 6. Mean results from Boosted Regression Tree models for 14 EECs within the LHSA region. .................................................................................................................................... 33 Appendix 2. Description of the prioritisation algorithm. .......................................................... 35 Figure 1. Illustration of how spatial prioritisation is created by the Zonation software. ........... 36 Appendix 3. List of biodiversity features included in Zonation analyses. ................................. 38 Table 7. Summary data for 40 amphibians included in the Zonation analyses. ......................... 38 Table 8. Summary of data for 316 birds included in the Zonation analyses. ............................. 40 Table 9. Summary of data for 64 mammals included in the Zonation analyses. ....................... 51 Table 10. Summary data for 212 plants included in the Zonation analyses. ............................. 54 Table 11. Summary of data for 62 reptiles included in the Zonation analyses. ......................... 61 Table 12. Summary data for 27 EECs and other biodiversity features included in the Zonation analyses. ................................................................................................................................ 64 1 | Page Appendix 4. Summary of the spatial data used to create the protected area layer used in the Zonation analyses. .............................................................................................................. 66 Appendix 5. The proportion of each biodiversity feature that represented in the high priority conservation areas and is currently protected within the LHSA region................................. 67 Table 13. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of amphibians contained within the high priority conservation and currently protected within the existing protected area network. ............................................................................................................................................... 67 Table 14. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of birds contained within the high priority conservation areas and currently protected within the existing protected area network. 69 Table 15. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of mammals contained within the high priority conservation areas and currently protected within the existing protected area network. ................................................................................................................................ 79 Table 16. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of plants contained within the high priority conservation and currently protected within the existing protected area network. ........... 82 Table 17. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of reptiles contained within the high priority conservation areas and currently protected within the existing protected area network ................................................................................................................................. 89 Table 18. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of EECs and other biodiversity features contained within the high priority conservation areas and currently protected within the existing protected area network. .......................................................................................... 92 Appendix 6. Summary of the spatial data used to create the development scenarios used in the Zonation analyses. .............................................................................................................. 94 Appendix 7. Predicted proportion of each biodiversity feature’s LHSA distribution predicted to be lost under each development scenario. .......................................................................... 95 Table 19. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of amphibians predicted to be lost under each of the development scenarios. ..................................................................................... 95 Table 20. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of birds predicted to be lost under each of the development scenarios. .................................................................................................. 97 Table 21. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of mammals predicted to be lost under each of the development scenarios. ................................................................................... 108 Table 22. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of plants predicted to be lost under each of the development scenarios. ................................................................................................ 111 Table 23. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of reptiles predicted to be lost under each of the development scenarios. ............................................................................................ 119 Table 24. The proportion of the LHSA distributions of EECs & other biodiversity features predicted to be lost under each of the development scenarios. ........................................ 122 Appendix 8. Overlap of proposed future development plans and conservation priority areas within the LHSA region. ..................................................................................................... 124 Figure 1. The priority ranking of the areas likely to be developed under the Urban Development scenario. ........................................................................................................ 124 Figure 2. The priority ranking of the areas likely to be developed under the Hunter Expressway scenario. .............................................................................................................................. 125 Figure 3. The priority ranking of the areas likely to be developed under the Important Agricultural Lands scenario. ................................................................................................ 126 2 | Page Figure 4. The priority ranking of the areas likely to be developed under the Cumulative development scenario. ........................................................................................................ 127 Figure 5. The priority ranking of the areas likely to be developed under the Mining scenario. ............................................................................................................................................. 128 3 | Page Appendix 1. Individual results for species distributions modelled using Maxent. Table 1. Mean results from MaxEnt models for 36 amphibian species within the LHSA region. Results show the mean number of training samples used to construct each model and the mean (± standard deviation) test AUC value across five‐fold cross‐ validated models. The data shown for the environmental variables represent the permutation importance for each variable used to construct the full model. See Section 3.2.1 for more details. Amphibians records of AUC Number Test cold_temp hot_temp mean_rain seasonal_rain slope rugg1000 final_vegetation Dry_sclerophyll_forests Rainforests Wet_sclerophyll_forests Adelotus brevis 452 0.9133 (0.0123) 7.02 0.04 34.72 5.28 16.29 0.04 7.11 1.06 3.91 21.10 Crinia signifera 2249 0.7441 (0.0103) 15.32 0.00 10.72 12.37 26.41 0.97 11.26 5.77 6.93 2.41 Crinia tinnula 365 0.9643 (0.0042) 21.94 10.20 19.38 11.04 17.82 1.08 1.58 7.69 1.46 7.39 Heleioporus australiacus 158 0.9732 (0.0109) 17.75 6.79 1.71 29.64 1.12 0.09 0.23 39.34 0.66 2.33 Lechriodus fletcheri 179 0.9297 (0.0193) 8.96 10.01 37.05 1.65 5.09 2.23 7.10 0.00 18.83 8.45 Limnodynastes dumerilii 299 0.8381 (0.0225) 20.81 9.84 1.66 21.97 14.84 0.94 5.11 18.36 0.71 2.71 Limnodynastes ornatus 162 0.8425 (0.027) 37.59 5.33 0.15 30.06 10.51 2.10 0.70 6.13 4.01 0.38 Limnodynastes peronii 1256 0.851 (0.0087) 59.59 14.59 1.83 7.12 10.25 0.22 2.76 0.59 1.23 0.86 Limnodynastes tasmaniensis 386 0.8385 (0.0189) 46.08