Thread by @Martin_Ecology

I am pleased to see our work on identifying global conservation priorities has now been published in @NatureEcoEvo We set out to determine which areas globally would provide the greatest benefits in jointly conserving biodiversity, carbon and water rdcu.be/cvZq3 (1/n)

We collated best available data on the amount of suitable habitat for all terrestrial vertebrates, including all reptile species. As a first for global prioritizations, we also integrated distribution data of ~41% of known plant species, which changed global priorities (2/n).

We furthermore integrated currently best available data on above and below ground carbon and vulnerable soil carbon at risk from land-use change, and freshwater water regulation. These data were jointly prioritized together with biodiversity (3/n)

We show how much land would be necessary to reduce species extinction risk under various assumptions, prioritising biodiversity only or together with carbon/water. Ultimately we find that we would need about ~70% of terrestrial land area to conserve all species (4/n)

However there are big gains possible with 10% or 30% of land in the right places. So location really matters with regards to the range of possible species targets achieved, and carbon/water benefits can come at minimal extra cost if jointly optimized for with biodiversity (5/n)

Through this joint prioritization we are able to spatially explore synergies and trade-offs of placing higher preference on carbon and/or water. The resulting shifts in conservation priorities can help to identify areas of importance for specific financial or policy targets (6/n)

Filling the ‘blindness’ towards plants in conservation prioritizations was another key aim of our work. We developed a specific framework to incorporate available plant data into our map, which helped to quantitatively identify old and new ‘hotspots’ for conservation (7/n)

Integrating plant species in particular has been made possible through a joint effort of networks and institutions including @KewScience, @bgci, @Naturalis_Sci and the wider BIEN (bien.nceas.ucsb.edu/bien/) network (8/n)

Lastly I want to stress that our framework identifies an upper potential conservation value.We do not prescribe how land should be managed nor do we consider costs, governance or constrains related to peoples livelihood.These factors can not be sensibly included at globally (9/n)

Broad-scale priority maps are useful in that they support high-level target conservation target setting, raise media and policy attention towards areas/pressures of interest, and help mobilize funding (i.e. GEF or CEPF) for conservation actions at national or finer scale (10/n)

In already planed follow-up work we will expand this framework at finer scale, directly involving stakeholders, considering scenarios of future land use and climate change impacts and optimizing for both conservation and restoration (11/n)

All main priority maps have been made openly available as part of the manuscript and will also be distributed via the UN Biodiversity lab (unbiodiversitylab.org) (12/n)

I furthermore want to thank everyone who has been instrumental for the work to be realized, explicitly but not limited to the following people @Xavier_DeLamo, @GSchmidtTraub, @NeilBurgess081, @pvisconbio, @lera_miles, @drarnoutvans, @markmulligan, @matthewlewis896 (13/n)

@fritz_steffen, @m_dimarco, @j_a_mcgowan, @bjenquist, @JCSvenning, @BrianMaitner, @JanWieringa, @McCarthyEcology, @ecomodeler and many more who are not twitter or I could not find (14/n)