Data from: Delimiting tropical mountain ecoregions for conservation

Ecological regions aggregate habitats with similar biophysical
characteristics within well-defined boundaries, providing spatially
consistent platforms for monitoring, managing and forecasting the health
of interrelated ecosystems. A major obstacle to the implementation of this
approach is imprecise and inconsistent boundary placement. For globally
important mountain regions such as the Eastern Arc (Tanzania and Kenya),
where qualitative definitions of biophysical affinity are well
established, rule-based methods for landform classification provide a
straightforward solution to ambiguities in region extent. The method
presented in this paper encompasses the majority of both contemporary and
estimated preclearance forest cover within strict topographical limits.
Many of the species here tentatively considered 'near-endemic'
could be reclassified as strictly endemic according to the derived
boundaries. LandScan and census data show population density inside the
ecoregion to be higher than in rural lowlands, and lowland settlement to
be most probable within 30 km. This definition should help to align
landscape scale conservation strategies in the Eastern Arc and promote new
research in areas of predicted, but as yet undocumented, biological
importance. Similar methods could work well in other regions where
mountain extent is poorly resolved. Spatial data accompany the online
version of this article.