Global trends in protected area connectivity from 2010 to 2018.

Connectivity of protected areas (PAs) is needed to ensure the long-term persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery. The Convention on Biological Diversity agreed in 2010 to have 17% of land covered by well-connected PA systems by 2020 (Aichi Target 11). We here globally assess, for all countries, the trends in terrestrial PA connectivity every other year from 2010 to 2018 using the ProtConn indicator, which quantifies how well the PA systems are designed to support connectivity. The percentage of protected connected land (ProtConn) has increased globally from 6.5% in 2010 to 7.7% in 2018. Oceania experienced the largest recent increase in PA connectivity, whereas Asia is the only content with a lower ProtConn in 2018 than in 2010. Globally, the relative increase in the percentage of protected connected land (ProtConn) is nearly twice that of the percentage of land under protection (PA coverage), due to clear improvements in the design of PA systems for connectivity in many regions. The connectivity of the PA networks has become more dependent on the permeability of the unprotected landscape matrix in between PAs and on the coordinated management of adjacent PAs with different designations and of transboundary PA linkages. The relatively slow recent increase in PA connectivity globally (2016-2018) raises doubt as to whether connectivity targets will be met by 2020, and suggests that considerable further action is required to promote better-connected PA systems globally, including the expansion of the PA systems to cover key areas for connectivity in many countries and regions.

Protected area connectivity: Shortfalls in global targets and country-level priorities.

Connectivity of protected areas (PAs) is crucial for meeting their conservation goals. We provide the first global evaluation of countries' progress towards Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity that is to have at least 17% of the land covered by well-connected PA systems by 2020. We quantify how well the terrestrial PA systems of countries are designed to promote connectivity, using the Protected Connected (ProtConn) indicator. We refine ProtConn to focus on the part of PA connectivity that is in the power of a country to influence, i.e. not penalizing countries for PA isolation due to the sea and to foreign lands. We found that globally only 7.5% of the area of the countries is covered by protected connected lands, which is about half of the global PA coverage of 14.7%, and that only 30% of the countries currently meet the Aichi Target 11 connectivity element. These findings suggest the need for considerable efforts to improve PA connectivity globally. We further identify the main priorities for improving or sustaining PA connectivity in each country: general increase of PA coverage, targeted designation of PAs in strategic locations for connectivity, ensuring permeability of the unprotected landscapes between PAs, coordinated management of neighbouring PAs within the country, and/or transnational coordination with PAs in other countries. Our assessment provides a key contribution to evaluate progress towards global PA connectivity targets and to highlight important strengths and weaknesses of the design of PA systems for connectivity in the world's countries and regions.

Protected areas in the world's ecoregions: How well connected are they?

Protected areas (PAs) are the main instrument for biodiversity conservation, which has triggered the development of numerous indicators and assessments on their coverage, performance and efficiency. The connectivity of the PA networks at a global scale has however been much less explored; previous studies have either focused on particular regions of the world or have only considered some types of PAs. Here we present, and globally assess, ProtConn, an indicator of PA connectivity that (i) quantifies the percentage of a study region covered by protected connected lands, (ii) can be partitioned in several components depicting different categories of land (unprotected, protected or transboundary) through which movement between protected locations may occur, (iii) is easy to communicate, to compare with PA coverage and to use in the assessment of global targets for PA systems. We apply ProtConn to evaluate the connectivity of the PA networks in all terrestrial ecoregions of the world as of June 2016, considering a range of median dispersal distances (1-100 km) encompassing the dispersal abilities of the large majority of terrestrial vertebrates. We found that 9.3% of the world is covered by protected connected lands (average for all the world's ecoregions) for a reference dispersal distance of 10 km, increasing up to 11.7% for the largest dispersal distance considered of 100 km. These percentages are considerably smaller than the global PA coverage of 14.7%, indicating that the spatial arrangement of PAs is only partially successful in ensuring connectivity of protected lands. The connectivity of PAs largely differed across ecoregions. Only about a third of the world's ecoregions currently meet the Aichi Target of having 17% of the terrestrial realm covered by well-connected systems of PAs. Finally, our findings suggest that PAs with less strict management objectives (allowing the sustainable use of resources) may play a fundamental role in upholding the connectivity of the PA systems. Our analyses and indicator make it possible to identify where on the globe additional efforts are most needed in expanding or reinforcing the connectivity of PA systems, and can be also used to assess whether newly designated sites provide effective connectivity gains in the PA system by acting as corridors or stepping stones between other PAs. The results of the ProtConn indicator are available, together with a suite of other global PA indicators, in the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

Revisiting species and areas of interest for conserving global mammalian phylogenetic diversity.

Various prioritisation strategies have been developed to cope with accelerating biodiversity loss and limited conservation resources. These strategies could become more engaging for decision-makers if they reflected the positive effects conservation can have on future projected biodiversity, by targeting net positive outcomes in future projected biodiversity, rather than reflecting the negative consequences of further biodiversity losses only. Hoping to inform the post-2020 biodiversity framework, we here apply this approach of targeting net positive outcomes in future projected biodiversity to phylogenetic diversity (PD) to re-identify species and areas of interest for conserving global mammalian PD. We identify priority species/areas as those whose protection would maximise gains in future projected PD. We also identify loss-significant species/areas as those whose/where extinction(s) would maximise losses in future projected PD. We show that our priority species/areas differ from loss-significant species/areas. While our priority species are mostly similar to those identified by the EDGE of Existence Programme, our priority areas generally differ from previously-identified ones for global mammal conservation. We further highlight that these newly-identified species/areas of interest currently lack protection and offer some guidance for their future management.

Land productivity dynamics in and around protected areas globally from 1999 to 2013.

Tracking changes in total biomass production or land productivity is an essential part of monitoring land transformations and long-term alterations of the health and productive capacity of land that are typically associated with land degradation. Persistent declines in land productivity impact many terrestrial ecosystem services that form the basis for sustainable livelihoods of human communities. Protected areas (PAs) are key to globally conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services that are critical for human well-being, and cover about 15% of the land worldwide. Here we globally assess the trends in land productivity in PAs of at least 10 km2 and in their unprotected surroundings (10 km buffers) from 1999 to 2013. We quantify the percentage of the protected and unprotected land that shows stable, increasing or decreasing trends in land productivity, quantified as long-term (15 year) changes in above-ground biomass derived from satellite-based observations with a spatial resolution of 1 km. We find that 44% of the land in PAs globally has retained the productivity at stable levels from 1999 to 2013, compared to 42% of stable productivity in the unprotected land around PAs. Persistent increases in productivity are more common in the unprotected lands around PAs (32%) than within PAs (18%) globally, while about 14% of the protected land and 12% of the unprotected land around PAs has experienced declines in land productivity. Oceania has the highest percentage of land with stable productivity in PAs (57%), whereas Europe has the lowest percentage (38%) and also the largest share of protected land with increasing land productivity (32%). We discuss the observed differences between PAs and unprotected lands, and between different parts of the world, in relation to different types and levels of human activities and their impact on land productivity. Our assessment of land productivity dynamics helps to characterise the state, pressures and changes in and around protected areas globally. Further research may focus on more detailed analyses to disentangle the relative contribution of specific drivers (from climate change to land use change) and their interaction with land productivity dynamics and potential land degradation in different regions of the world.

Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land.

Land free of direct anthropogenic disturbance is considered essential for achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes but is rapidly eroding. In response, many nations are increasing their protected area (PA) estates, but little consideration is given to the context of the surrounding landscape. This is despite the fact that structural connectivity between PAs is critical in a changing climate and mandated by international conservation targets. Using a high-resolution assessment of human pressure, we show that while ~40% of the terrestrial planet is intact, only 9.7% of Earth's terrestrial protected network can be considered structurally connected. On average, 11% of each country or territory's PA estate can be considered connected. As the global community commits to bolder action on abating biodiversity loss, placement of future PAs will be critical, as will an increased focus on landscape-scale habitat retention and restoration efforts to ensure those important areas set aside for conservation outcomes will remain (or become) connected.

Built-up areas within and around protected areas: Global patterns and 40-year trends.

Protected areas (PAs) are a key strategy in global efforts to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services that are critical for human well-being. Most PAs have some built-up structures within their boundaries or in surrounding areas, ranging from individual buildings to villages, towns and cities. These structures, and the associated human activities, can exert direct and indirect pressures on PAs. Here we present the first global analysis of current patterns and observed long-term trends in built-up areas within terrestrial PAs and their immediate surroundings. We calculate for each PA larger than 5 km2 and for its 10-km unprotected buffer zone the percentage of land area covered by built-up areas in 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2014. We find that globally built-up areas cover only 0.12% of PA extent and a much higher 2.71% of the unprotected buffers as of 2014, compared to 0.6% of all land (protected or unprotected). Built-up extent in and around PAs is highest in Europe and Asia, and lowest in Africa and Oceania. Built-up area percentage is higher in coastal and small PAs, and lower in older PAs and in PAs with stricter management categories. From 1975 to 2014, the increase in built-up area was 23 times larger in the 10-km unprotected buffers than within PAs. Our findings show that the development of built-up structures remains limited within the boundaries of PAs but highlight the need to carefully manage the considerable pressure that PAs face from their immediate surroundings.

Inland surface waters in protected areas globally: Current coverage and 30-year trends.

Inland waters are unique ecosystems offering services and habitat resources upon which many species depend. Despite the importance of, and threats to, inland water, global assessments of protected area (PA) coverage and trends have focused on land habitats or have assessed land and inland waters together. We here provide the first assessment of the level of protection of inland open surface waters and their trends (1984-2015) within PAs for all countries, using a globally consistent, high-resolution (30 m) and validated dataset on permanent and seasonal surface waters based on Landsat images. Globally, 15% of inland surface waters are covered by PAs with mapped boundaries. Estimated inland water protection increases to 16.4% if PAs with reported area but delineated only as points are included as circular buffers. These coverage estimates slightly exceed the comparable figure for land but fall below the 17% goal of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi Target 11 for 2020. Protection levels are very uneven across countries, half of which do not yet meet the 17% target. The lowest coverage of surface water by PAs (<5%) was found in Africa and in parts of Asia. There was a global trend of permanent water losses and seasonal water gains within PAs, concomitant with an increase of both water types outside PAs. In 38% of countries, PAs lost over 5% of permanent water. Global protection targets for inland waters may well be met by 2020, but much stronger efforts are required to ensure their effective conservation, which will depend not only on sound PA governance and management but also on the sustainable use of water resources outside PAs. Given the pressures on water in a rapidly changing world, integrated management planning of water resources involving multiple sectors and entire basins is therefore necessary.

Investigations on indoor Radon in Austria, part 2: Geological classes as categorical external drift for spatial modelling of the Radon potential.

Geological classes are used to model the deterministic (drift or trend) component of the Radon potential (Friedmann's RP) in Austria. It is shown that the RP can be grouped according to geological classes, but also according to individual geological units belonging to the same class. Geological classes can thus serve as predictors for mean RP within the classes. Variability of the RP within classes or units is interpreted as the stochastic part of the regionalized variable RP; however, there does not seem to exist a smallest unit which would naturally divide the RP into a deterministic and a stochastic part. Rather, this depends on the scale of the geological maps used, down to which size of geological units is used for modelling the trend. In practice, there must be a sufficient number of data points (measurements) distributed as uniformly as possible within one unit to allow reasonable determination of the trend component.

Classification criteria and probability risk maps: limitations and perspectives.

Delineation of polluted zones with respect to regulatory standards, accounting at the same time for the uncertainty of the estimated concentrations, relies on classification criteria that can lead to significantly different pollution risk maps, which, in turn, can depend on the regulatory standard itself. This paper reviews four popular classification criteria related to the violation of a probability threshold or a physical threshold, using annual (1996-2000) nitrogen dioxide concentrations from 40 air monitoring stations in Milan. The relative advantages and practical limitations of each criterion are discussed, and it is shown that some of the criteria are more appropriate for the problem at hand and that the choice of the criterion can be supported by the statistical distribution of the data and/or the regulatory standard. Finally, the polluted area is estimated over the different years and concentration thresholds using the appropriate risk maps as an additional source of uncertainty.