Integrating ecological resilience into forest conservation planning to inform spatiotemporal prioritization

Forests, which harbor most terrestrial biodiversity, are increasingly threatened by climate change and chronic anthropogenic disturbances, with profound consequences of regime shifts. Although ecological resilience plays a critical role in sustaining forest persistence, it has not been adequately integrated into conservation planning to guide spatiotemporal priorities. Here, we propose a spatiotemporal prioritization protocol that integrates conservation value, cost, and ecological resilience to identify priority areas and determine the temporal urgency for forest protection, aiming to improve cost-effectiveness and outcomes of biodiversity conservation in dynamic environments. The protocol consists of six steps: (i) selecting and quantifying conservation features; (ii) evaluating conservation cost; (iii) measuring forest resilience using the temporal autocorrelation (TAC) of vegetation anomaly; (iv) assessing resilience trends by calculating the linear trends of TAC using the Theil-Sen slope estimator; (v) identifying spatial priority areas using Zonation by integrating conservation features, cost, and resilience; and (vi) determining temporal urgency for top priority areas based on long-term resilience trends. Using the Core Area of the Wuhan Metropolitan Area (CWMA) as a case study, we identified the top 30 % spatial priority areas, covering 1742.3 km² of persistent forest, within which 803 units (covering 631.2 km²) exhibited significant resilience decline, indicating an urgent need for intervention. Importantly, integrating resilience improves conservation coverage across most species. Our study emphasizes the significance of incorporating habitat resilience into forward-looking biodiversity conservation planning in changing environments and demonstrates the potential of resilience mapping in support this effort by informing spatiotemporal, rather than solely spatial, conservation prioritization.