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A common assumption is that ecosystem services respond linearly to changes in habitat size. This assumption leads frequently to an "all or none" choice of either preserving coastal habitats or converting them to human use. However, our survey of wave attenuation data from field studies of mangroves, salt marshes, seagrass beds, nearshore coral reefs, and sand dunes reveals that these relationships are rarely linear. By incorporating nonlinear wave attenuation in estimating coastal protection values of mangroves in Thailand, we show that the optimal land use option may instead be the integration of development and conservation consistent with ecosystem-based management goals. This result suggests that reconciling competing demands on coastal habitats should not always result in stark preservation-versus-conversion choices.

State wildlife conservation programs provide a strong foundation for biodiversity conservation in the United States, building on state wildlife action plans. However, states may miss the species that are at the most risk at rangewide scales, and threats such as novel diseases and climate change increasingly act at regional and national levels. Regional collaborations among states and their partners have had impressive successes, and several federal programs now incorporate state priorities. However, regional collaborations are uneven across the country, and no national counterpart exists to support efforts at that scale. A national conservation-support program could fill this gap and could work across the conservation community to identify large-scale conservation needs and support efforts to meet them. By providing important information-sharing and capacity-building services, such a program would advance collaborative conservation among the states and their partners, thus increasing both the effectiveness and the efficiency of conservation in the United States. © 2012 by American Institute of Biological Sciences. All rights reserved.

California endemic vascular plant range patterns were quantified using a flora-based geodatabase technique that defined species range by geographic area and elevation band. Resulting species spatial patterns are reported for 228 geographic units. Over 60% of the endemic species range size distributions were found to have range sizes less than 10,000 km2. The largest endemic taxon range was 275,749 km2, or 67% of the state. California endemic plant richness distribution patterns are summarized by 228 geographic units, and reported by various criteria. California's Central Coast Ranges, Sierra Nevada foothills, high elevation Sierra Nevada Mountains, Channel Islands, San Jacinto Mountains, Napa and Lake Counties, Inyo Mountains, sections of the Mojave Desert, and San Bernardino Mountains were all identified as areas with unique endemic plant attributes. We compared endemic species richness between map units in zones containing similar topography and climate, and found that area only weakly correlated with species richness, suggesting other factors have stronger influence on endemism in continental California. The findings have implications for developing conservation plans that target endemic species. In particular, we identify areas of the state, previously de-emphasized, that deserve greater recognition based on the characteristics of their restricted endemic plants. This analysis underestimates the level of endemism near the borders with Oregon and Baja California because of the artificial limitation of the database to the boundaries of the state of California. However, range distribution estimates produced from digital renditions of floral keys proved effective in this study, an inexpensive approach that could be implemented in other regions of the world for which floras have been published.