ABSTRACT Climate diversity significantly influences biodiversity by shaping climatic niches and buffering against climate fluctuations and represents a key indicator of biodiversity conservation values. Protecting climate diversity within protected areas (PAs) enhances the resilience to future climate change of PAs. However, the conservation status of global climate diversity remains unknown. Here, we quantitatively assessed the spatially continuous distribution of global climate diversity and identified key areas for climate diversity (KAs) as the top 30% of values, consistent with the Target of Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We found that only 10.26% of these KAs are protected globally. These KAs exhibit considerable overlap with global mountainous regions, with conservation coverage varying widely (1.35%–49.32%). Among biomes, tropical moist forests within KAs show the highest climate diversity and the largest area proportion, yet only 9.64% are protected. In contrast, tropical coniferous forests have the lowest protection (4.07%). Notably, mountainous developing countries, despite harboring high climate diversity, have limited conservation capacity and significant conservation gaps. Our results characterize the global conservation status of KAs, providing a novel perspective for formulating targeted strategies to strengthen global PA networks.

China's Grain for Green Program (GGP) is the largest reforestation program in the world. Previous studies lacked targeted assessments regarding its effectiveness in vegetation conversion. Using the time series of Vegetation Continuous Fields in southwest China, we derived the spatiotemporal variations in total vegetation cover, short vegetation (SV) cover and tree canopy (TC) cover during the period from 2000 to 2016. By conducting residual trend analyses independently on the SV and TC cover time series, the trends in human‐induced SV cover (SVH) and TC cover (TCH) were detected. Then, we performed overlay analyses to derive the human‐induced SV–TC conversion in cropland. The study found that the SV in southwest China showed a net browning trend whereas the TC presented a net greening trend. Approximately 69.5% of the pixels with a significant browning trend in SVH showed a significant greening trend in TCH. Furthermore, 50.6% of the human‐induced SV–TC conversion in southwest China occurred in cropland, and the proportion was even larger for the eastern provinces. Our study provides a targeted evaluation of the performance of the GGP and highlights that the implementation of the GGP has caused widespread SV–TC conversion that potentially mitigates global climate change.

全球生物多样性丧失严重威胁生态系统服务和功能.在精细尺度上构建高效和代表性的微优先区网络,是提升区域生物多样性保护成效的有效途径.本文以喜马拉雅东南部生物多样性保护优先区域为例,以濒危、特有和国家重点保护植物为代表性保护对象,首先运用Maxent模型模拟物种潜在生境分布,然后基于Zonation模型判识该优先区域内的微优先区,进而分析其生态代表性,最后评估该地区已建保护地的保护空缺.结果表明:(1)物种分布模型较准确地预测出保护植物集中分布于藏东南地区.(2)微优先区主要分布于藏东南高山峡谷区、藏南山原湖盆谷地区及藏西南喜马拉雅山脉中段地区.(3)基于物种识别的微优先区对生态系统及其服务有较好的生态代表性,但将来的保护规划有必要将物种、生态系统及其服务耦合识别微优先区.(4)微优先区与已建保护地在地理分布上存在差异,保护空缺区域主要位于察隅、墨脱北部、洛扎北部、浪卡子南部、岗巴、亚东、康马及萨嘎中部,以国家公园为主体的保护地整合优化工作应重点关注这些区域.本研究可在精细尺度上提升生物多样性保护有效性,为地方层面的保护地体系整合优化提供方法支持.

Sacred natural sites (SNSs) are examples of community‐level governance for sustainable management of natural resources, which can greatly benefit nature conservation. However, the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the role of SNSs in conservation has resulted in overly simplistic classifications of SNSs that challenge current SNS research and conservation practice. Here, we propose an SNS classification framework based on the types and levels of material and spiritual services that SNSs provide, and applied this framework in the Khawa Karpo, an important sacred area in the Tibetan region of China based on detailed field surveys conducted from 2000 to 2004 and 2015 to 2017 that addressed six types of SNSs, including sacred mountains, Ri Vgag s, sacred lakes, sacred rocks, sacred caves, and sacred trees. We found that SNSs in this region played a crucial role in sustaining traditional cultures and providing material services. Adoption of our classification framework will assist with the development of management strategies and targeted conservation actions for individual SNSs, thus improving conservation levels particularly in the Tibetan region.

Evaluation of conservation priorities in existing protected areas (PAs) is critical for effective allocation of limited conservation resources and optimization of PA structure. Traditional approaches of prioritizing within existing PAs are based on individual-scoring and complementarity-based algorithms, and are often guided by individual natural features rather than complementarity among PAs. However, the efficiencies of synthesizing individual-scoring and complementarity-based algorithms in prioritizing PAs are still unknown. Here, we implemented three algorithms for prioritizing 42 Nature Reserves (NRs) in Yunnan Province, China, including an individual-scoring algorithm (ISA), species-number complementarity algorithm (SNCA), and a new species-value complementarity algorithm (SVCA) which synthesized the former two algorithms. Subsequently, the species number and species conservation value evaluated the efficiencies of three algorithms and explored their implications in conservation planning. We found that the spatial distribution of priority levels of NRs varied in different biogeographical regions, and that most of the national NRs received higher conservation priorities than provincial NRs in all three algorithms. Additionally, the average species number conservation efficiency in SNCA was 3.45 and 1.61% higher than in ISA and SVCA, respectively, while the average species conservation value efficiency in SVCA was 1.83 and 3.37% higher than in SNCA and ISA. These results indicated that SNCA could protect more species at a minimum cost if conservation planning was aimed only at protecting the number of species. However, when species conservation value is the focus of conservation planning, SVCA was more cost-effective. Our analysis supports efforts at efficient allocation of conservation resources in individual PAs and entire PA network at different biogeographical scales, and informs decision-makers on leveraging cost-effective conservation efforts in the future.

保护优先区系统判识是实现生物多样性高效保护的关键途径之一.云南处于全球生物多样性热点地区,还未见陆栖脊椎动物保护优先区规划研究,且已有研究仅评估了自然保护区的保护状况,而对其他保护地类型的认识还非常有限.本文以保护物种为指示对象,首先应用物种分布与系统保护规划模型判识出陆栖脊椎动物保护优先区;然后,通过与3个已有保护优先区图层对比分析,研究陆栖脊椎动物保护优先区的空间分布格局;最后,评估了6种已建保护地类型对保护优先区的保护状况.结果 表明:(1)按照17％和31％的面积保护目标,判识出的陆栖脊椎动物保护优先区主要分布于滇西北、滇西南、滇南和滇东北及沿国界边境地区;(2)31％目标下的陆栖脊椎动物保护优先区与3个已有保护优先区图层的重叠面积比均在44％以上,同时陆栖脊椎动物保护优先区也识别出大量不重叠的优先区域;(3)17％和31％目标下,保护优先区的自然保护区覆盖率分别为14.11％和11.39％,而全部6类保护地的覆盖率上升为24.01％和20.95％,说明其余5类可持续利用型保护地(风景名胜区、森林公园、湿地公园、地质公园与水源地保护区)能够极大地提升保护覆盖率,填补保护空缺.本研究能够为云南省正在实施的"以国家公园为主体的自然保护地体系建设"工作提供数据与方法支持.

在自然或人为活动的干扰下,生态系统的正常功能或多或少受到影响.生态系统干扰信息可为跟踪气候变化响应、探寻全球碳循环路径和维系生态系统功能提供重要参考.飞速发展的遥感技术为生态系统干扰信息的获取提供了新的思路,高时空分辨率的遥感影像能及时有效地监测干扰事件发生的时间和位置.本文以中国西南地区为例,选用2005-2016年MODIS 影像的地表温度 LST(Land Surface Temperature)和增强型植被指数 EVI(Enhanced Veg-etation Index)产品,首先应用遥感干扰指数模型提取2007-2016年的逐年生态系统干扰数据,然后研究了西南地区森林与草地灌丛生态系统干扰的时空分布,并通过地面着火点观测记录、遥感火烧迹地数据、Google Earth和政府报告等验证干扰指数模型的有效性,最后明晰中国西南地区森林与草地灌丛干扰强度的分布特征.结果表明:①本文使用的遥感干扰指数模型对干扰事件十分敏感,明显优于单独使用EVI或LST.②本文提取的森林生态系统干扰和草地灌丛生态系统干扰与Google Earth、气象数据等保持高度一致.③森林与草地灌丛干扰是研究区内最主要的生态系统干扰,约占每年总干扰面积的90％.④森林干扰最强烈区在川西高原地区,可能的干扰类型为森林火灾,草地灌丛干扰最强烈区为青藏高原农牧区,可能的干扰类型为气象干旱干扰.

Threatened species are inadequately represented within protected areas (PAs) across the globe. Species conservation planning may be improved by using public species-occurrence databases, but empirical evidence is limited of how that may be accomplished at local scales. We used the Three Parallel Rivers Region of China as a case to investigate the utility of public species data in improvement in conservation planning. We mapped the distribution of each species as suitable habitat ranges using species distribution models (for 261 plants and 29 animals with >= 5 occurrences) or as point locations (for 591 plants and 328 animals with <5 occurrences). Systematic conservation planning was then applied to identify three optimized portfolios of priority conservation areas (PCAs) for achieving increasing targets of 17, 31, and 50% of the total study area. We then compared the distributions of PCAs in this study with those in two existing PCA datasets. PCAs in this study covered greater areas in the southeastern highly-disturbed regions and along valleys of great rivers than two existing datasets that had a focus on intact ecosystems in remote mountain areas. The three portfolios of PCAs had some overlap with two existing PCA datasets, with the overlapping area accounting for 26.4-39.0% of the total areas of our PCAs. Our PCAs could complement existing PCAs by identifying more priority areas in developed landscapes; this is critical for protecting biodiversity in such areas as they face greater pressures. PCAs in this study received a much lower PA coverage (32.9-43.1%) than existing PCAs (60.2-60.8%) because of biased PA distribution toward mountain areas. Our results suggest that conservation planning based on limited public species data could improve local-scale priority-setting practices. The analysis supports effective integration of species targets in China's new national park system by identifying optimized networks of PCAs.

明确旅游景点的空间分布特征对合理有效地开发、配置旅游资源具有重要意义.以“三江并流”区为研究区,通过构建旅游景点的空间分布数据,依据其属性特征划分为地文景观、水域风光与生物景观3类自然景点和古迹建筑与休闲求知2类人文景点,系统研究了旅游景点的空间分布格局.结果表明:“三江并流”区旅游景点呈东密西疏聚集分布的特点,聚集强度较高的市县为玉龙县＞丽江古城区＞大理市＞香格里拉市,较弱的为泸水、福贡县;人文类景点聚集强度大于自然类景点,休闲求知类聚集强度最高,生物景观类最小;各类型景点在大理市、丽江古城及玉龙县均为高密度分布且分布格局对空间尺度具有依赖性.旅游景点的分布受人文和自然环境因子的影响,多集中分布于经济发展水平高、人口规模大、交通条件好,有特定植被类型覆盖的较低海拔地区.旅游景点聚集区多数分布在农业和城镇生态功能区、生物多样性保护、林业水源涵养和水土保持生态功能区,同时也属于生态高敏感区.

Ecological restoration programmes (ERPs) play an important role in reversing degraded ecosystems and realizing environmental sustainability. However, few studies have given attention to the spatial heterogeneity in the effectiveness of large-scale ERPs for restoring vegetation on a broad regional scale. Based on the GIMMS NDVI3g time-series of southwest China, we determined the spatiotemporal trends of the peak growing season NDVI (PGS-NDVI) in the pre-ERP stage (1982-1998) and in the post-ERP stage (1999-2015). Using the NDVI-climate regression model developed during the pre-ERP stage and the residual trend analysis method, we derived the anthropogenic PGS-NDVI trends of the post-ERP stage on a per-pixel and spatial average basis. We found that there existed an east (greening)-west (browning) contrasting pattern in the anthropogenic vegetation change during the post-ERP stage. The proportions of anthropogenic greening pixels were heterogeneous among provinces, ranging from 66.1% (Guangxi) to 8.6% (Xizang). The ERP effectiveness index and the ERP efficiency index for Guangxi were the highest among the provinces, whereas they were both negative for Yunnan and Xizang. Such contrasting restoration pattern was probably caused by multiple factors, including but not limited to the imbalanced implementation of large-scale ERPs and the inappropriate afforestation that inadequately takes into account local conditions. Our analysis highlights the great heterogeneity in the effectiveness of large-scale ERPs for vegetation restoration across a broad regional scale. Large-scale ERPs should be implemented in a coordinated manner and be tailored to local conditions.

文化生态系统服务是当前的研究热点之一.各类生态系统与自然资源为人类科学研究活动与知识体系发展提供了重要支撑,而将科学研究作为文化服务进行定量评估的研究还鲜见报道.本文以"三江并流"区为研究区域,采用已发表的自然科学类文献数量为指标定量评估科学研究文化生态系统服务的时空分布格局;首先采用中国知网(CNKI)检索得到相关文献共586篇,然后构建文献属性信息与空间分布数据库,进而评估科学研究文化服务的时空分布特征.结果表明,"三江并流"区科学研究文化服务量随时间推移逐渐升高,地质学类研究是区内最为热门的研究类型.尽管科学研究文化服务在中海拔地区分布范围较广,但最高等级的服务则集中分布在香格里拉县和丽江市等高海拔地区,总体服务等级分布呈"东高西低"的特征,且科学研究文化服务等级较高的地区可达性也普遍偏高.

游憩是一项重要的文化生态系统服务类型.以“三江并流”区为研究区,选择景观多样性、自然度、河流湖泊元素、景点等级、可达性和服务设施等6项指标,从游憩潜力和游憩机会两方面进行评估,得到该地区现有和潜在的游憩文化生态系统服务量,并划分为5个等级.结果 表明:游憩潜力与机会共同影响游憩服务量,“三江并流”区游憩潜力与机会在空间分布上并不匹配,游憩潜力较高的地区占17.09％,主要分布于怒江州、大理州、德钦县、丽江古城区及玉龙县的部分区域;10.06％的地区游憩机会极低,主要包括贡山县、德钦县以及香格里拉北部地区;具有高等级潜在游憩服务量的地区,集中分布于大理州、丽江古城区、玉龙县和香格里拉的部分地区,占研究总面积的17.64％.具有较高游憩潜力的景点,大多数现有服务量也比较高.服务量为4级以上的景点数量占44.68％,集中分布在大理州、玉龙县、香格里拉、德钦等地,与高等级潜在游憩服务量的地理分布十分相似,说明现有游憩服务的开发在一定程度上符合自然规律.

Abstract Biodiversity conservation is essential for realizing China's new vision of an ecological civilization. China has been implementing numerous massive ecological sustainability and protected area (ES&PA) programs across the entire country. These programs have greatly restored degraded ecological environments, improved provisions of critical ecosystem services and increased rural livelihoods. However, despite the general improvements in environmental quality, the trend of rapid biodiversity loss has not been significantly reduced. We found that most of the current ES&PA programs lack explicit biodiversity goals, and thus have limited contributions to the conservation of biodiversity. Given the limited resources available for and huge investments associated with these programs, achieving greater biodiversity gains under them is the most cost‐effective way to conserve biodiversity. We recommend six strategies for strengthening the country's biodiversity conservation, that is, strengthening biodiversity in ES&PA programs, PAs as the core, integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services, delivering effective monitoring, broad inclusiveness of stakeholders and mainstreaming biodiversity. These strategies also highlight China's priorities for achieving significant progresses toward the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020, and should be important options for developing China's post‐2020 biodiversity framework.

Overlapping protected area (PA) designations are a global widespread phenomenon and have seriously deteriorated the performance of China's PA system. However, a comprehensive investigation on the extents of both overlapping designations and conservation complementation among different PA categories is still lacking in China. Here, we used the case of Yunnan, southwest China, to quantitatively assess the spatial and institutional overlaps among six primary PA categories. We then investigated the conservation complementation among the different PA categories by measuring their contributions to improving the ecological representation, coverage of areas of conservation importance, and connectivity of the entire PA network. Overlaps existed within most pairs of PA categories; approximately 10% of the total PA area was designated as multiple categories and simultaneously managed by more than one institution. Different PA categories could complement each other in terms of protection coverage, ecological representation and connectivity. The sustainable use PAs effectively complemented the strict PAs by doubling the total PA coverage, increasing the ecological representation, raising the overall connectivity index from 1.44% to 4.03% and taking ~50% of the total area of key connecting PAs. Conflicting management regimes in combination with expanded PA objectives are the major drivers of the overlapping PA designations. By explicitly measuring the extents of overlapping and complementation among different PA categories, our analysis helps to efficiently assess the existing PAs and integrate them into China's new national park system. This study provides insights into empirical generalities about overlapping designations and conservation complementation among multiple PA categories.

Many studies have evaluated the overall effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) in halting deforestation from a perspective of the entire PA system. However, few studies assess PA performance at an individual level, and investigate the effects of management level and establishment age of PM. With nature reserves (NRs) in southwest China as the case, we set an independent control area (CA) for each NR 10-km away from its boundary to avoid the spillover effect. Forested pixels at least 300 m apart were then sampled within each NR and its CA. We applied the Propensity Score Matching method with five control variables to balance the heterogeneity of land characteristics between NR and CA sample pixels. Based on the matched samples for each NR, the individual effectiveness of 137 NRs between 2001 and 2012 was quantified. We then compared the effects of NRs with different management levels (national and provincial) and establishment ages (designated between 1981-1990 and 1991-2000) by means of nonparametric test and statistical inference. We found that approximately 63% of the NRs suffered less deforestation within their boundaries than in adjacent CM. National NRs were more effective than provincial NRs in curbing deforestation, but age had little bearing on the effectiveness of NRs. Our results revealed that NRs could play a prominent role in the greening trends of southwest China. This study offers the first individual-level assessment on NR effectiveness for forest protection in southwest China, which helps provide a more solid support for promoting effective NR management.

It is well known that existing protected areas (PAs) should function as focal areas for expanding PA systems. The optimal complementary conservation areas are often identified by implementing two approaches in systematic conservation planning, i.e., unlocking or locking existing PAs. However, evidence-based studies are lacking for clarifying the efficiencies of these two planning approaches. With Sichuan in southwest China – part of a global biodiversity hotspot – as one case, this study first assessed the ecological representativeness of existing nature reserves (NRs). Using 32 natural vegetation types as the conservation features, we then implemented a systematic conservation planning process by running Marxan software with NR-unlocked and NR-locked scenarios. A human disturbance index was also included as a penalty function in Marxan for achieving cost-effective planning. We finally investigated the efficiencies of the unlocking and locking planning approaches by comparing the outcomes of the NR-unlocked and NR-locked scenarios. We found that existing NRs were geographically biased towards the western mountainous regions with high elevations and low human disturbance levels. For achieving the same quantitative conservation targets, the total area of the NR-locked priority conservation areas was 18.6% larger than that of the NR-unlocked areas, whereas the area of NR-locked complementary areas to existing NRs was 15.3% smaller than that of NR-unlocked ones. Moreover, the NR-locked priority conservation areas had higher ecological representativeness than NR-unlocked areas. The results suggest that if a completely new PA system is to be established without considering existing PAs, the unlocking approach could more efficiently achieve the full conservation targets at lower costs of land area and with better connected habitats. When existing PAs must be used as focal areas for expansion, the locking approach is more cost-effective for filling conservation gaps by requiring smaller amounts of complementary areas. Our analysis provides evidence-based support for expanding the current PA systems in a cost-effective manner.

Managing multiple ecosystem services (ESs) in a win-win manner is a necessary and challenging task. However, our understanding of the spatial interactions among ESs is relatively limited, particularly in mountainous areas. Using the global biodiversity hotspot known as the Three Parallel Rivers Region in Southwest China as a case study, this paper systematically investigated the spatial trade-offs and synergies among 8 ESs (i.e. crop production, livestock-raising, water supply, carbon storage, carbon sequestration, soil retention, habitat support and nature recreation). We mapped the township-level distributions of the 8 ESs and measured their relationships using Spearman's rank correlation coefficients and overlap analyses of ES hotspots/coldspots. Four types of ES bundles were identified by applying the K-means clustering analysis to the 8 ESs. Our results revealed high to moderate levels of interactions among most pairs of ESs. Most provisioning services showed trade-offs with ESs of the other categories, whereas most regulating services demonstrated synergies with other ESs. The ES bundles presented a reasonable set of ecological zones that were characterized by the provisions of different ESs. The spatial patterns of ESs and their interactions corresponded well to the regional socio-ecological gradients in topography, climate and human activities. Our results should have important applications in regional decision makings on economic development and environmental conservation. This study also provides a good case for demonstrating the complex relationships among ESs in a typical mountainous biodiversity hotspot.

Capturing the full range of climatic diversity in a reserve network is expected to improve the resilience of biodiversity to climate change. Therefore, a study on systematic conservation planning for climatic diversity that explicitly or implicitly hypothesizes that regions with higher climatic diversity support greater biodiversity is needed. However, little is known about the extent and generality of this hypothesis. We used the case of Yunnan, southwest China, to quantitatively classify climatic units and modeled 4 climatic diversity indicators, including the variety (VCU), rarity (RCU), endemism (ECU) of climatic units, and a composite index of climatic diversity (CICD). We used 5 schemes that reliably identify priority conservation areas (PCAs) to identify areas with high biodiversity conservation value. We then investigated the spatial relationships between the 4 climatic diversity indicators and the results of the 5 PCA schemes and assessed the representation of climatic diversity within the existing nature reserves. The CICD was the best indicator of areas with high conservation value, followed by ECU and RCU. Contrary to conventional knowledge, VCU was not positively associated with biodiversity conservation value. The rarer or more endemic climatic units tended to have higher reserve coverage than the more common units. However, only 28 units, covering 10.5% of the land in Yunnan, had >17% of their areas protected. In addition to climatic factors, topography and human disturbances also significantly affected the relationship between climatic diversity and biodiversity conservation value. Our results suggest that climatic diversity can be an effective surrogate for establishing a more robust reserve network under climate change in Yunnan. Our study improves understanding of the relationship between climatic diversity and biodiversity and helps build an evidence-based foundation for systematic conservation planning that targets climatic diversity in response to climate change.

Protecting wilderness areas (WAs) is a crucial proactive approach to sustain biodiversity. However, studies identifying local-scale WAs for on-ground conservation efforts are still very limited. This paper investigated the spatial patterns of wilderness in a global biodiversity hotspot – Three Parallel Rivers Region (TPRR) in southwest China. Wilderness was classified into levels 1 to 10 based on a cluster analysis of five indicators, namely human population density, naturalness, fragmentation, remoteness and ruggedness. Only patches characterized by wilderness level 1 and ≥1.0 km 2 were considered WAs. The wilderness levels in the northwest were significantly higher than those in the southeast and clearly increased with the increase in elevation. The WAs covered approximately 25% of TPRR’s land, 89.3% of which was located in the >3,000 m elevation zones. WAs consisted of 20 vegetation types, among which temperate conifer forest, cold temperate shrub and alpine ecosystems covered 79.4% of WAs’ total area. Most WAs were still not protected yet by existing reserves. Topography and human activities are the primary influencing factors on the spatial patterns of wilderness. We suggest establishing strictly protected reserves for most large WAs, while some sustainable management approaches might be more optimal solutions for many highly fragmented small WAs.