| A strategy for assigning priorities in biodiversity conservation was developed for the rivers of the proposed Greater Addo Elephant National Park (GAENP) in South Africa. Due to the limited availability of biological information on the freshwater ecosystems of this area, a desktop approach, supplemented by aerial and land surveys, was used to devise a new river classification typology. This typology incorporated landscape attributes as surrogates for biodiversity patterns, resulting in defined physical "signatures" for each river type. Riverine biodiversity is considered to be conserved by including rivers of each type as defined by the respective signatures. Where options existed, and two or more rivers shared the same signature, a simple procedure was... |
