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To meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, the international community requires clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially and how multiple targets can be pursued concurrently. To support goal setting and the implementation of international strategies and action plans, spatial guidance is needed to identify which land areas have the potential to generate the greatest synergies between conserving biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. Here we present results from a joint optimization that minimizes the number of threatened species, maximizes carbon retention and water quality regulation, and ranks terrestrial conservation priorities globally. We found that selecting the top-ranked 30% and 50% of terrestrial land area would conserve respectively 60.7% and 85.3% of the estimated total carbon stock and 66% and 89.8% of all clean water, in addition to meeting conservation targets for 57.9% and 79% of all species considered. Our data and prioritization further suggest that adequately conserving all species considered (vertebrates and plants) would require giving conservation attention to ~70% of the terrestrial land surface. If priority was given to biodiversity only, managing 30% of optimally located land area for conservation may be sufficient to meet conservation targets for 81.3% of the terrestrial plant and vertebrate species considered. Our results provide a global assessment of where land could be optimally managed for conservation. We discuss how such a spatial prioritization framework can support the implementation of the biodiversity and climate conventions.

This data repository contains the results of the NatureMap ( naturemap.earth/) conservation prioritization effort. The maps were created by jointly optimizing biodiversity and NCPs such as carbon and/or water. Maps are supplied at both 10km and 50km resolution and all maps that aim to find priority areas for all species considered in the analysis, utilize a series of representative sets. The ranks for each layer are area-specific and can be used to extract summary statistics by simple subsetting. For example, to obtain the top 30% of land area for biodiversity and carbon, one needs to create a mask of all areas lower than a value of 30 from the respective ranked layers. For convenience two files are supplied that contain the fraction of land area per grid cell times 1000. Multiplying those with the cell area (100km2, respectively 2500km2) gives the exact amount of land area in a given grid cell. These are labelled "globalgrid_mollweide_**km.tif " can be used to create masks for the priority maps. The geographic projection is World Mollweide Equal Area projection.

To meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, countries and the international community require clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially, and multiple targets be pursued concurrently1. To support governments and political conventions, spatial guidance is needed to identify which areas should be managed for conservation to generate the greatest synergies between biodiversity and nature’s contribution to people (NCP). Here we present results from a joint optimization that maximizes improvements in species conservation status, carbon retention and water provisioning and rank terrestrial conservation priorities globally. We found that, selecting the top-ranked 30% (respectively 50%) of areas would conserve 62.4% (86.8%) of the estimated total carbon stock and 67.8% (90.7%) of all clean water provisioning, in addition to improving the conservation status for 69.7% (83.8%) of all species considered. If priority was given to biodiversity only, managing 30% of optimally located land area for conservation may be sufficient to improve the conservation status of 86.3% of plant and vertebrate species on Earth. Our results provide a global baseline on where land could be managed for conservation. We discuss how such a spatial prioritisation framework can support the implementation of the biodiversity and climate conventions.

The fluorescence spectrum of 1/2% p-terphenyl in toluene was obtained by means of a Hilger medium quartz spectrograph. The solution was contained in a 1 cm. thick quartz absorption cell taped over the spectrograph slit, and fluorescence was excited by a 40 mc. radium source placed next to the cell. The plate was exposed 65 hours and the density measured by a Leeds and Northrup recording microdensitometer.