Mapping of biodiversity hubs and key ecosystem services as a tool for shaping optimal areas for conservation

land use/cover classes of interest. We established the distribution of primary land use/cover classes following [34]. The familiarity with remote sensing enables us to explore beyond fea- tures that are recognizable when illuminated by natural light using appropriate band combina- tion adjustments. Based on Horning [69], we have applied of some common band combinations applied to Landsat 8 images displayed as a red, green, blue (RGB) to detect and distinguish different land use/land cover: Red = 4, Green = 3, Blue = 2: Natural Color Red = 7, Green = 6, Blue = 4: False Color (urban) Red = 5, Green = 4, Blue = 3: Color Infrared (vegetation) Red = 6, Green = 5, Blue = 4: Vegetation Analysis Red = 5, Green = 6, Blue = 2: Healthy Vegetation Red = 5, Green = 6, Blue = 4: Land/Water 2.5.2 Water balance. Water balance refers to water resources available in a catchment for different purposes including, but not limited to, agriculture and domestic purposes. The flow results coupled with the basin characteristics (slopes and imperviousness) can also be used in planning for watershed management measures including but not limited to erosion control, soil moisture and land management measures [23]. The accurate measurement of water bal- ance is a rigorous exercise, requiring extensive site-based survey and measurements river water flow and other components is thus time consuming and expensive. Various approaches for measuring water balance exist, typically having to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of afford-

ability. Rapid, spatially-explicit ES modeling tools such as Co$ting Nature or WaterWorld show promise for providing information about ES across multiple sites, to support decision making. Until such time comes where all the prerequisites are gathered desktop analyses rely- ing on third party data remains the only method available. 2.5.3 Human footprint on water quality/diarrheal disease and Human footprint on water quality/annual. Conservation initiatives rely on spatially explicit data on the location and distribution of ES to ensure that co-benefits are fully provided by nature to the people, Table 1. Description of uses of Landsat bands (based on [68]). Band name L8 OLI/ TIRS Bandwidth (μm) Resolution (m) Description of use Coastal/ Aerosol Band 1 0.43–0.45 30 Coastal areas and shallow water observations; aerosol, dust, smoke detection studies. Blue (B) Band 2 0.45–0.51 30 Bathymetric mapping; soil/vegetation discrimination, forest type mapping, and identifying manmade features. Green (G) Band 3 0.53–0.59 30 Peak vegetation; plant vigor assessments. Red (R) Band 4 0.64–0.67 30 Vegetation type identification; soils and urban features. Near-Infrared (NIR) Band 5 0.85–0.88 30 Vegetation detection and analysis; shoreline mapping and biomass content. Shortwave Infrared-1 (SWIR-1) Band 6 1.57–1.65 30 Vegetation moisture content/drought analysis; burned and fire-affected areas; detection of active fires. Shortwave Infrared-2 (SWIR-2) Band 7 2.11–2.29 30 Additional detection of active fires (especially at night); plant moisture/drought analysis.

Panchromatic (PAN) Band 8 0.50–0.68 15 Sharpening multispectral imagery to higher resolution. Cirrus Band 9 1.36–1.38 30 Cirrus cloud detection. Thermal (T) Band 10 10.60–11.19 100 Ground temperature mapping and soil moisture estimations. Band 11 11.50–12.51 100 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253151.t001 PLOS ONE How do old national parks cope with regenerating conservation mission? PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253151 August 17, 2021 8 / 20