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Optimizing hotspot areas for ecological planning and management based on biodiversity and ecosystem services

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Abstract

The significance of biodiversity and ecosystem services are gradually recognized by human as an approach towards sustainability, so it is important to understand relationships and congruence between them to support conservation planning, especially in the hotspot areas with a prominent role in conservation. However, the management of most conservation hotspots mainly focused on biodiversity, and rarely concerned with ecosystem services. With the aim of proposing criteria for conservation strategies that contribute to the optimization of biodiversity and ecosystem services, in this study, a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based approach was designed to estimate and map the biodiversity and ecosystem services in Chongqing Municipality of China. Furthermore, the distributions of hotspot areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services were mapped based on the relationship between cumulative ecosystem services and areas. Finally the statistical analysis was processed focused on specific conservation objectives. The results showed that hotspot areas can conserve the most biodiversity but with the least ecosystem services under the conservation plans target to biodiversity conservation. In contrast, depending on the ecosystem services of interest, hotspot areas can conserve the largest ecosystem services but with the least biodiversity. By integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services into conservation plan, we found that the conservation and regeneration of these small areas, would contribute to a conservation of 44% of the biodiversity hotspot and 14%–42% of the ecosystem services hotspot. Moreover, the current nature reserve selection was not maximize the biodiversity and ecosystem services compared to integration strategy, indicating that hotspot areas conservation and selection is vital for optimization protection of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and has practical significance for natural resources and ecosystem management.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

    Yang Xiao, Zhiyun Ouyang, Weihua Xu, Yi Xiao, Hua Zheng & Chaofan Xian

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  1. Yang Xiao
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  2. Zhiyun Ouyang
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  3. Weihua Xu
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  4. Yi Xiao
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  5. Hua Zheng
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  6. Chaofan Xian
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Correspondence to Zhiyun Ouyang.

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Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Key Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2011BAC09B08), Special Issue of National Remote Sensing Survey and Assessment of Eco-Environment Change Between 2000 and 2010 (No. STSN-04-01)

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Xiao, Y., Ouyang, Z., Xu, W. et al. Optimizing hotspot areas for ecological planning and management based on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Chin. Geogr. Sci. 26, 256–269 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-016-0803-4

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