In nature, location is everything. Ecology exists because many factors - such as species, soils, water and history - interact together across the landscape to create varying patterns of natural communities and ecological processes. The most powerful tool for conservation, therefore, is one that allows the cross-disciplinary integration of knowledge from taxonomy, hydrology, demography, economics and other fields into a single analytical framework. That framework is geography.

Conservation Geography describes how new technological tools to do that analysis, chief among them geographic information systems (GIS), are being used to revolutionize the work of non-profit organizations and other groups that are committed to conservation. In the broadest sense of the word, conservation encompasses issues of environmental justice, the rights of indigenous peoples, and sustainable development.