A GIS-based policy support tool to determine national responsibilities and priorities for biodiversity conservation

RESEARCH ARTICLE A GIS-based policy support tool to determine national responsibilities and priorities for biodiversity conservation Yu-Pin Lin1☯, Dirk S. SchmellerID2☯, Tzung-Su Ding3‡, Yung Chieh Wang4‡, Wan-Yu Lien1‡, Klaus Henle5☯, Reinhard A. KlenkeID5,6☯* 1 Department of Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2 ECOLAB, Universite´ de Toulouse, CNRS, INPT, UPS, Toulouse, France, 3 School of Forestry and Resource Conservation, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 4 Department of Soil and Water Conservation, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung City, Taiwan, 5 UFZ—Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Department of Conservation Biology, Leipzig, Germany, 6 German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), sDiv–The Synthesis Center of iDiv, Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. ‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work. * reinhard.klenke@ufz.de Abstract Efficient biodiversity conservation requires that limited resources be allocated in accordance with national responsibilities and priorities. Without appropriate computational tools, the pro- cess of determining these national responsibilities and conservation priorities is time inten- sive when considering many species across geographic scales. Here, we have developed a computational tool as a module for the ArcGIS geographic information system. The ArcGIS National Responsibility Assessment Tool (NRA-Tool) can be used to create hierarchical

lists of national responsibilities and priorities for global species conservation. Our tool will allow conservationists to prioritize conservation efforts and to focus limited resources on rel- evant species and regions. We showcase our tool with data on 258 bird species and various biophysical regions, including Environmental Zones in 58 Asian countries and regions. Our tool provides a decision support system for conservation policy with attractive and easily interpretable visual outputs illustrating national responsibilities and priorities for species con- servation. The graphical output allows for smooth integration into assessment reports, such as the European Article 17 report, the Living Planet Index report, or similar regional and global reports. Introduction State signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity must not only define their own strategy to protect biodiversity, they must also set their own priorities considering available resources. Even more importantly, biodiversity rich countries with few resources may be able to justify the demand of additional resources for international institutions. There is still room to increase the global efficiency of biodiversity conservation by aligning national conservation PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135 December 3, 2020 1 / 23 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Lin Y-P, Schmeller DS, Ding T-S, Wang YC, Lien W-Y, Henle K, et al. (2020) A GIS-based policy support tool to determine national

responsibilities and priorities for biodiversity conservation. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0243135. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135 Editor: Pedro Abella´n, Universidad de Sevilla, SPAIN Received: March 2, 2020 Accepted: November 17, 2020 Published: December 3, 2020 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135 Copyright: © 2020 Lin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant computer program files are available from https:// sourceforge.net/projects/arcgis-nra-tool/. A list of species is provided with the Supplemental