Identifying complementary conservation and restoration priority areas for plant species

Abstract

The coverage of protected areas (PAs) remains far from the Kunming-Montreal target and degraded ecosystems are greatly limiting the conservation efficiency of PAs. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to identify conservation and restoration priority areas to supplement existing PAs. A case study was conducted focusing on Yunnan, southwestern China, which intersects with three world biodiversity hotspots. First, the spatial ranges for 3768 representative conservation plant species were mapped using species distribution models. Subsequently, planning units were classified into three restorability categories, namely no-need restoration, potentially restorable and non-restorable units, according to land cover changes between 2000 and 2020. Then, conservation and restoration priority areas were identified by applying a two-step systematic conservation planning process. Finally, replacement cost analysis was applied to compare the effectiveness of existing PAs and the overall 30 % priority areas. Northwestern, southwestern, and southeastern Yunnan have high biodiversity conservation values. Especially in eastern and southeastern Yunnan, large amounts of restoration priority areas were identified. Conservation and restoration priority areas account for 15.80 % and 3.69 % of Yunnan's land, respectively. Compared to existing PAs, conservation priority areas can increase the number of species covered from 2461 to 3277, and further to 3566 when including restoration priority areas. Compared to existing PAs, the mean species coverage in the overall 30 % priority areas has increased from 27.28 % to 72.69 %. Notably, 12.86 % of existing PAs were identified as restoration priority areas. This study indicates that in addition to conservation measures, implementing restoration strategies in high conservation-value areas is equally important.