Planning priority conservation areas for biodiversity under climate change in topographically complex areas: A case study in Sichuan province, China

136,420 km2 (accounting for over 28% of Sichuan province area) and 125,980 km2(accounting for over 26% of Sichuan province area), respectively, which were also concentrated in a transi- tional zone between the plain and the plateau. Compared with current nature reserves (72,408 km2), the area of priority conservation areas in this study was nearly 1.8 times larger. To ana- lyze the effect of topography on the conservation framework, different costs were used to opti- mize priority conservation areas during two periods. The results suggested that there was an obvious spatial mismatch between combination cost and land use-only cost, such as account- ing for about 30% of the area of priority conservation areas for 2031–2060. Meanwhile, the area of priority conservation from combination cost is smaller than that from land use-only cost, indicating that conservation cost could be sensitive to conservation planning. Therefore, considering the cost limitation, the results from the combination cost is more practical for bio- diversity conservation. To verify the validity of results, box plots revealed protection proportions of species habitats for National Protection Grade I and National Protection Grade II, as shown in Fig 7A–7C. The Fig 5. The effect of topography on species adaptation to climate change (a shows topographic position, b illustrates topographic diversity, c and d represent changes in the temperature in the periods of 2011–2040, and 2031–2060, e and f show spatial distributions

of adaptation in the periods of 2011–2040, and 2031–2060, and g represents relationships among topographic diversity and the effect of topography). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243425.g005 PLOS ONE Planning priority conservation areas for biodiversity under climate change in topographically complex areas PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243425 December 23, 2020 9 / 15