A major aspect of habitat preservation involves determining how land and water should be split up so that as many species as possible have adequate space available to thrive. Humans have had an impact on wildlife in many ways. Some of the most prominent impacts are the cutting down of forests and the infiltration of water because of the overall increase in human mobility. In order to preserve land and water, the following must be considered:
It is not enough to enforce different levels of protection within different hotspots to ensure the preservation of biodiversity. It is also important to have a method to determine whether or not the preservation efforts are successful. The success of hotspot preservation will be analyzed in two parts. The first part should be a year-round, continuous analysis, and the second should occur every ten years and will be carried out by the International Committee on Biodiversity of the United Nations.
Continuous analysis will be conducted by the protectors of biodiversity (POBs) who will be in charge of creating reports throughout the year that monitor the state of the various species inhabiting the land. The precise details of these reports can only be determined by the POBs in accordance the needs of the area. The reports will contain indicators of biodiversity which will be used to determine the state of biodiversity in an area.
In addition to maintaining a watch on key species, the POBs will be responsible for researching their areas and being as knowledgeable about their land as possible so that they can come up with the details needed for their reports. These responsibilities include discovering any new organisms on the land and in water as well as determining the number of invasive species present and measuring the levels of air, land, and water pollution. Random sampling and measuring species richness and abundance within that area (e.g., microbes per mL of water) could be a way for the the Protectors of Biodiversity to gain knowledge about their area that could be used in synthesis reports on the state of biodiversity. Their knowledge will provide the foundation for the biodiversity indicators required to measure the level of success in preserving the hotspot.
The exact metrics which will be used will depend on the area in question. As the European Commission has already seen through their plan to help biodiversity thrive by 2020, it is not enough to have very broad indicators of biodiversity (2011). For example, the questions, "What is changing?, Why is it changing?, Why is it important?, and What are we doing about it?" are far too broad. Subsets of these questions would be effective and must be asked on a case-by-case basis (2011).
The assessment of the land and water preservation plans will also include a more formal analysis of key indicators that will be created by the International Committee on Biodiversity every ten years. The indicators that will be used to assess the level of success of our solution will be broader as it considers the large global scale.
If the Protectors of Biodiversity discover an imminent problem during any analysis of land, a solution to address it must be thought of and implemented as soon as possible. Just as the indicators must be determined on a case-by-case basis, so too must the solution to any problem with biodiversity loss.
