Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T07:21:17.785Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

IMPORTANT PLANT AREAS IN THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2010

T. M. Al-Abbasi ,
A. Al-Farhan ,
A. W. Al-Khulaidi ,
M. Hall ,
O. A. Llewellyn ,
A. G. Miller  and
A. Patzelt
T. M. Al-Abbasi
Affiliation:
National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD), PO Box 61681, Riyadh 11575, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A. Al-Farhan
Affiliation:
Botany and Microbiology Department, King Saud University, PO Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A. W. Al-Khulaidi
Affiliation:
Agricultural Research and Extension Authority (AREA), PO Box 5788, Taiz, Yemen.
M. Hall
Affiliation:
Centre for Middle Eastern Plants, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR, Scotland, UK. Author for correspondence. E-mail: m.hall@rbge.org.uk
O. A. Llewellyn
Affiliation:
National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD), PO Box 61681, Riyadh 11575, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A. G. Miller
Affiliation:
Centre for Middle Eastern Plants, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR, Scotland, UK.
A. Patzelt
Affiliation:
Oman Botanic Garden, Muscat, Oman.
Get access

Abstract

An Important Plant Area programme has been initiated for the Arabian region by the IUCN Arabian Plant Specialist Group. The aim of this programme is to assess hotspots of plant diversity in the region and designate the most important as Important Plant Areas. These assessments are conducted on the basis of specific criteria and this paper presents the criteria which have been adopted for the Arabian Peninsula countries of Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen. These Arabian criteria differ from those originally developed for Europe, and so they are presented here in full. This paper also discusses the context of the Important Plant Area programme and its ability to provide a framework for conservation planning.

Keywords

ArabiaconservationImportant Plant AreaKey Biodiversity Area
Type
Articles
Information
Edinburgh Journal of Botany , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 25 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abuzinada, A. H. (ed.) (2003). First Saudi Arabian National Report on the Convention on Biological Diversity. Riyadh: NCWCD.Google Scholar
Al-Hubaishi, A. & Müller-Hohenstein, K. (1984). An Introduction to the Vegetation of Yemen. Eschborn: GTZ.Google Scholar
Anderson, S. (2002). Identifying Important Plant Areas. Plantlife International.Google Scholar
Balmford, A. & Gaston, K. J. (1999). Why biodiversity surveys are good value. Nature 398: 203–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, T. M., Mittermeier, R. A., da Fonseca, G. A. B., Gerlach, J., Hoffmann, M., Lamoreux, J. F. et al. (2006). Global biodiversity conservation priorities. Science 313: 58–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cowling, R. M. (1999). Planning for persistence: Systematic reserve design in southern Africa's Succulent Karoo desert. Parks 9: 17–30.Google Scholar
Dawson, T. P. (2007). Potential impacts of climate change in the Arabian Peninsula. Proceedings of the International Conference on Desertification, 12–16 May 2007, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), Kuwait.Google Scholar
Eben-Saleh, M. A. (1998). Land use and planning of vernacular landscape in highlands of the southwest of Saudi Arabia. J. Sustain. Forest. 7: 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eken, G., Benunn, L., Brooks, T. M., Darwall, W., Fishpool, L. D. C., Foster, M. et al. (2004). Key Biodiversity Areas as site conservation targets. BioScience 54: 1110–1118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faith, D. P. (1994). Phylogenetic pattern and the conservation of biological diversity. Philos. Trans., Ser. B 345: 45–58.Google Scholar
Gari, L. (2006). A history of the hima conservation system. Environment and History 12: 213–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghazanfar, S. A. & Fisher, M. (1998). Vegetation of the Arabian Peninsula. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, M. & Miller, A. G. (In press). Documenting Arabian plants in a changing climate. In: Hodkinson, T. R., Jones, M. B., Waldren, S. & Parnell, J. A. N. (eds) Climate Change, Ecology and Systematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, M., Al-Khulaidi, A. W., Miller, A. G., Scholte, P. & Al-Qadasi, A. H. (2008). Arabia's last forests under threat: Plant biodiversity and conservation in the valley forest of Jabal Bura (Yemen). Edinburgh J. Bot. 65: 113–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannah, L., Midgley, G., Andelman, S., Araújo, M., Hughes, G., Martinez-Meyer, E. et al. (2007). Protected Area needs in a changing climate. Front. Ecol. Environ. 5: 131–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IUCN (2001). IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria, Version 3.1. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.Google Scholar
IUCN (2007). Identification and Gap Analysis of Key Biodiversity Areas: Targets for Comprehensive Protected Areas Systems. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.Google Scholar
Kareiva, P. & Marvier, M. (2003). Conserving biodiversity coldspots. Am. Sci. 91: 344–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, A. T., Smith, R. J., Cowling, R. M., Desmet, P. G., Faith, D. P., Ferrier, S. et al. (2007). Improving the Key Biodiversity Areas approach for effective conservation planning. BioScience 57: 256–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, A. T., Cowling, R. M., Rouget, M., Balmford, A., Lombard, A. T. & Campbell, B. M. (2008). Knowing but not doing: Selecting priority conservation areas and the research implementation gap. Conserv. Biol. 22: 610–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Llewellyn, O. A. (2003). The basis for a discipline of Islamic environmental law. In: Foltz, R. C. et al. (eds) Islam and Ecology, pp. 185–247. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, O. A., Hall, M., Miller, A. G., Al-Abbasi, T. M., Al-Wetaid, A. H., Al-Harbi, R. J. et al. (2010). Important Plant Areas in the Arabian Peninsula: 1. Jabal Qaraqir. Edinburgh J. Bot. 67: 37–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margules, C. R. & Pressey, R. L. (2000). Systematic conservation planning. Nature 405: 243–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, A. G. & Morris, M. (1988). Plants of Dhofar, the southern region of Oman: traditional, economic and medicinal uses. Office of the Advisor for Conservation of the Environment, Diwan of Royal Court, Sultanate of Oman.Google Scholar
Miller, A. G. & Morris, M. (2004). Ethnoflora of Soqotra. Edinburgh: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Miller, A. G. & Pullan, M. (2008). Floristic and biodiversity informatics developments at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Proceedings of Documenting, Analysing and Managing Biodiversity in the Middle East Conference, 20–22 October 2008, Jordan.Google Scholar
Mittermeier, R. A. (2005). Hotspots Revisited: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., Brooks, T. M., Pilgrim, J. D., Konstant, W. R., da Fonseca, G. A. B. & Kormos, C. (2003). Wilderness and biodiversity conservation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100: 10309–10313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Myers, N., Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., Da Fonseca, G. A. B. & Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403: 853–858.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naidoo, R., Balmford, A., Ferraro, P. J., Polasky, S., Ricketts, T. H. & Rouget, M. (2006). Integrating economic costs into conservation planning. Trends Ecol. Evol. 21: 681–687.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neale, S. H., Pullan, M. R. & Watson, M. F. (2007). Online biodiversity resources – principles for usability. Biodiversity Informatics 4: 27–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PlantlifeInternational (2004). Identifying and Protecting the World's Most Important Plant Areas. Salisbury: The Important Plant Area Secretariat, Plantlife International.Google Scholar
Rouget, M., Cowling, R. M., Pressey, R. L. & Richardson, D. M. (2003). Identifying the spatial components of ecological and evolutionary processes for regional conservation planning in the Cape Floristic Region. Divers. Distrib. 9: 191–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SABONET (2004). Important Plant Areas in Southern Africa: Draft Criteria. Available online at http://www.plantlife.org.uk/international/assets/important-plant-areas/IPAs-criteria-and-methodology/southern-africa-consultation.pdf (accessed 21 December 2008).Google Scholar
Scholte, P., Khulaidi, A. W. & Kessler, J. J. (1991). The Vegetation of the Republic of Yemen (Western Part). The Netherlands: DHV Consultants for Environmental Protection Council and Agricultural Research Authority.Google Scholar
Scholte, P. (2000). Defining a legend for the future vegetation map of Tropical Arabia. Proceedings of the IAVS Symposium, pp. 258–262. Uppsala: Opulus Press.Google Scholar
SecretariatoftheConventiononBiologicalDiversity (2002). Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and Botanic Gardens Conservation International.Google Scholar
Vane-Wright, R. I., Humphries, C. J. & Williams, P. H. (1991). What to protect? Systematics and the agony of choice. Biol. Conserv. 55: 235–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Q. D. (2004). Taxonomic triage and the poverty of phylogeny. Philos. Trans., Biol. Sci. 359: 571–583.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, K. A., McBride, M., Bode, M. & Possingham, H. P. (2006). Prioritising global conservation efforts. Nature 440: 337–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed