Biodiversity Hotspots

Another project I'm working on for the chair of the department, Richard Weller, is the mapping of biodiversity hotspots around the globe.  These 35 hotspots, primarily defined by Conservation International are supposed to contain 50% of the earths organisms, yet only cover about 2.6% of our planet's surface.  I believe this has decreased from 16%, but I'm not sure when those stats were measured.  Here's an interesting map, though I'm not really sure what these distortions are based on.

 Here is another more basic one.

The goal of this research is to develop a series of maps and info-graphics that start to pick up and compare the conditions of these demarcations in relation to development encroaching upon them... What we are calling "critical edge conditions".

I'm still in the process of discovering what these hotspots actually entail in terms of internal habitation/ development, and how they are demarcated, what the edges look like, and the forces working upon/ against them.  Wondering how these demarcations relate to the wild and perhaps wilderness, or as it seems, they seem to entail a larger region across the globe including entire countries, and hence cities and megalopoli.  While these regions, or certain parts of them, encompass notions of wild or areas of wilderness, the forces pushing on them seem to be another form of human/ developmental/capitalistic and expansionistic wild.  A lack of self-awareness , a self propagating expansion and reproductive madness.  The problem is, this reproduction is so strong, there is no balancing or push back. So one interest I have here is representing the wild nature of these pressures, not simply the demarcations of the hotspots themselves.  Where is the push and pull of these opposing expansions?  Might they be able to coincide?  Might we be able to have any control over these developmental sprawling forces beyond the simple conservationist outlining of sensitive biodiversity zones? Could we plan for patches and corridors of "nature" in the development of theses clashing edges?