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Human impacts on the Earth’s biosphere are driving the global biodiversity crisis. Governments are preparing to agree on a set of actions intended to halt the loss of biodiversity and put it on a path to recovery by 2050. We provide evidence that the proposed actions can bend the curve for biodiversity, but only if these actions are implemented urgently and in an integrated manner.

Information on species distribution is recognized as a crucial input for biodiversity conservation and management. To that end, considerable resources have been dedicated towards increasing the quantity and availability of species occurrence data, boosting their use in species distribution modeling and online platforms for their dissemination. Currently, those platforms face the challenge of bringing biology into modeling by making informed decisions that result in meaningful models, based on limited occurrence and ecological data. Here we describe BioModelos, a modeling approach supported by an online system and a core team of modelers, whereby a network of experts contributes to the development of species distribution models by assessing the quality of occurrence data, identifying potentially limiting environmental variables, establishing species’ accessible areas and validating modeling predictions qualitatively. Models developed through BioModelos become freely and publicly available once validated by experts, furthering their use in conservation applications. Our approach has been implemented in Colombia since 2013 and it currently consist of a network of nearly 500 experts that collaboratively contribute to enhance the knowledge on the distribution of a growing number of species and it has aided the development of several decision support products such as national risk assessments and biodiversity compensation manuals. BioModelos is an example of operationalization of an essential biodiversity variable at a national level through the implementation of a research infrastructure that enhances the value of open access species data.

The potential of global biodiversity conservation efforts to also deliver critical benefits, such as carbon storage and freshwater services, is still unclear. Using spatially explicit data on 3,500 range-restricted threatened species, carbon storage, and freshwater provision to people, we conducted tradeoff analyses, explicitly addressing both biodiversity and ecosystem services in selection of priority areas, to explore the potential for aligning these objectives. These analyses revealed a promising scope for aligning objectives, in particular for biodiversity and freshwater, which is not evident from previous studies that merely analyzed overlap of biodiversity and ecosystem services derived for each objective independently. However, this alignment is not complete. By revealing important synergies and tradeoffs among services, these analyzes suggest particular regions and service combinations for which spatial planning and appropriate conservation mechanisms (e.g., payments for ecosystem services) can be used to realize synergies and mitigate tradeoffs.

SUMMARYMesoamerica, Chocó and the tropical Andes are recognized as biodiversity hotspots where conservation action is urgently needed. Because World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) ecoregions are commonly used as the basis for conservation decisions, an understanding of WWF ecoregions’ environmental heterogeneity and their representation in current protected areas (PAs) is important for identifying priority areas for conservation. Thirteen environmental domain classifications based on 22 climatic and topographical variables and the Shannon diversity index were used to quantify environmental diversity for each WWF ecoregion. The area of each environmental domain and ecoregion was compared with the World Database on Protected Areas 2007. The most environmentally-diverse ecoregions were poorly represented in the PAs and several ecoregions showed low environmental heterogeneity representation inside PAs, for example the Balsas depression, Sierra Madre del Sur and the Chiapas Sierras in Mexico, some sierras in Central America, the Middle Magdalena, inter-Andean valleys, the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia and the Western Moist Forest of Ecuador. Using WWF ecoregions as equivalent units for conservation and management can be misleading, given their environmental heterogeneity; therefore, they have limited usefulness in assessing environmental representation in PAs. An underestimation of environmental heterogeneity representation in PAs can have misleading implications for conservation actions in regions where detailed biological information is lacking. Conservation efforts should focus on the environmental domains and ecoregions showing high environmental heterogeneity that is poorly represented in PAs.

This paper presents e-clouds as a tool to support biodiversity decision making, offering a Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm to execute computing and technic intensive applications such as species distribution models. But mere access to these tools is not enough if usability and economy are not aligned with users interests. This article presents a friendly interface hiding all the complexities of using a public cloud infrastructure, containing an application supported by expert researchers, and an architecture behind the scenes that minimizes the cost of using such a computational and technical infrastructure, what results in a very attractive option for researchers and other stakeholders to get the most out of public clouds for their tasks.

"En este estudio se modeló el nicho ecológico proyectado como distribución potencial de 313 especies amenazadas en Mesoamérica, Chocó y los Andes tropicales, según las listas de la UICN. De estas especies, 285 fueron plantas y 28 fueron vertebrados terrestres. La superposición de las distribuciones de las especies amenazadas cubrió prácticamente toda la región. Ecuador mostró cerca del 30% de su área con 50 especies. Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua y Panamá mostraron > 50, aunque en < 0.5% del área de cada país. Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua y Panamá mostraron de 21 a 50 especies en > 50% de su área. El Salvador y Honduras, de 11 a 20 en > 50% de su área y México de 1 a 5 especies en > 50% de su área. La distribución de estas especies en áreas transformadas (agricultura y áreas urbanas) varió del 11al 30%; El Salvador, Panamá y Guatemala mostraron > 50% de la distribución, Colombia, Honduras y México < 40%, Belice y Ecuador, < 25% cada uno, El Salvador, Honduras, Panamá, Nicaragua y México mostraron altos porcentajes de distribución para las clases Amphibia, Liliopsida, Polipodiopsida y los órdenes Asterales, Fabales, Laurales, Myrtales, Scrophulariales y Rubiales. En todos los países, las especies de los órdenes Campanulales y Rosales mostraron distribuciones < 35% en las áreas transforma, la de los órdenes Fabales, Laurales, Myrtales y Rubiales fue mayor en estas áreas y menor la de los órdenes Campanulales, Asterales y la clase Liliopsida, Belice y Costa Rica mostraron la mejor representación para las clases Amphibia, Liliopsida, Polipodiopsida y los órdenes Asterales, Fabales, Laurales y Rosales. La cordillera de Talamanca en Panamá y Costa Rica, los páramos y cordilleras andinas, y la selva húmeda del oeste de Ecuador se identificaron como sitios prioritarios de conservación por su alta riqueza de especies amenazadas."