Incorporating socioeconomic factors into the analysis of biodiversity hotspots

Hotspot analysis is the identification and ranking of countries or other geographic regions on the basis of biodiversity. Hotspots have exceptional biodiversity per unit land area. This paper introduces a new method of hotspot analysis that ranks hotspots on the basis of biodiversity and anthropogenic threats to biodiversity. These threats are represented by socioeconomic factors such as human population size, rural population density, population growth rate, and governmental debt. Residuals from multiple regression models were used to rank the 17 megadiversity countries. In general, ranks based on threats to biodiversity were different from those based on biodiversity alone. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.