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

(GIS) [7, 39, 40]. Furthermore, for comparability between regions and applicability on differ- ent ecological scales or administrative levels, such an approach needs to be freely scalable to account for the size of administrative boundaries [7, 36]. Although there are highly specialized instruments for spatial prioritization, allocation of conservation efforts and spending, and reserve planning (e.g. MARXAN [17] and ZONATION [15]), their application at global scale is difficult and they do not provide a clear definition of the conservation responsibilities of particular regions or countries. Here, we describe a GIS tool to determine national responsibilities and conservation priori- ties globally. The method underlying the GIS tool [36, 37] is limited only by the availability of distribution data for species and habitats, and is much less data demanding than other approaches, while still scientifically robust [13]. The ArcGIS National Responsibility Assess- ment Tool (NRA-Tool) uses freely available shapefiles of species distributions, environmental zones, and political borders to automate the analysis for a large set of species for which data are available. Data sources include the Spatial Data & Mapping Resources and the Red List database from the IUCN [41, 42]. We explain the GIS module’s user interface and illustrate the general concept and function- ality with data from four species of shrews, which have their distribution center either only in Europe or are widespread across Eurasia. As a case study, we also provide national responsibil-

ity assessments for 258 bird species of Asia. Methods Implementation of the national responsibility and conservation priority method In general, our method can be used to assess the responsibility of an administrative unit on any spatial scale. The scale of analysis will be defined by the “focal area” (FA; often the country for which a responsibility assessment must be made) and the “reference area” (RA). The refer- ence area is the region in which the focal area must be fully contained and the size to which the focal area relates. For the assessment of national responsibilities, a sub-continental (e.g. Asia, Europe, North and South America), continental (e.g. Eurasia, Australia) or global scale is appropriate. For some applications it may be useful to choose a reference area that is defined Table 1. Approaches for the determination of conservation priorities and respective references. Approach References Combined use of spatial distributions of species, habitats, ecosystems and their services, connectivity measures, species compositions and economic costs [15–20] Spatial characteristics of species distributions [21, 22] Community composition [23] Patterns of genetic and morphological variation [24, 25] Geographic and evolutionary rarity [26, 27] Trait or phylogenetic distinctiveness [28] Trait-based metrics [29] Movement behavior [30] Conservation condition, biodiversity value, pressure factor, and cover relevance of habitat types [31] Social and ecological dynamism [32] Human disturbances [33] Complementary comparison of flagship and background species [34]

Multivariate statistics based on variables such as state of knowledge, forest loss, forest loss acceleration, protected area size and relative species diversity [35] https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135.t001 PLOS ONE GIS-based policy support tool to determine national responsibilities for biodiversity conservation PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135 December 3, 2020 3 / 23