State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. O. Box 2871, Beijing, 100085, People's Republic of China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People's Republic of China.
Ambio. 2020 Jan;49(1):245-257. doi: 10.1007/s13280-019-01155-4. Epub 2019 Mar 9.
The dramatic increase in anthropogenic activity severely threatens the biodiversity and life-support services that underpin human well-being. The broadened focus of protecting ecosystem services (ESs) better aligns the interests of people and biodiversity conservation. In this study, we used species richness as a surrogate for biodiversity and mapped the key ESs in East Africa with the goal to assess the spatial congruence between biodiversity and ESs, and evaluate the representation of current protected areas (PAs) network for biodiversity and ESs. The results showed that PAs well represented for species richness and regulating services but underrepresented for provisioning services. The PAs network occupies 10.96% of East Africa's land surface, and captures 20.62-26.37% of conservation priorities for vertebrate and plant species. It encompasses more than 16.23% of priority areas for three regulating services, but only 6.17% and 5.22% for crop and livestock production, respectively. Strong correlations and high overlaps exist between species richness and regulating services, particularly for carbon storage, water yield and plants. Thus, we believe that actions taken to conserve biodiversity also will protect certain ESs, which in turn will create new incentives and funding sources for the conservation of biodiversity. Overall, our results have wide-ranging policy implications and can be used to optimize conservation strategies for both biodiversity and multiple ESs in East Africa.
人为活动的急剧增加严重威胁着支撑人类福祉的生物多样性和生命支持服务。扩大保护生态系统服务（ESs）的重点更好地协调了人类和生物多样性保护的利益。在这项研究中，我们使用物种丰富度作为生物多样性的替代指标，并绘制了东非的关键 ESs 图，目的是评估生物多样性和 ESs 之间的空间一致性，并评估当前保护区域（PAs）网络对生物多样性和 ESs 的代表性。结果表明，PAs 很好地代表了物种丰富度和调节服务，但在供应服务方面的代表性不足。PA 网络占据了东非陆地表面的 10.96%，并捕获了脊椎动物和植物物种保护优先级的 20.62-26.37%。它涵盖了三个调节服务的优先领域的 16.23%以上，但分别仅占作物和畜牧业生产的 6.17%和 5.22%。物种丰富度和调节服务之间存在很强的相关性和高度重叠，特别是在碳储存、产水量和植物方面。因此，我们相信保护生物多样性的行动也将保护某些 ESs，这反过来又将为保护生物多样性创造新的激励和资金来源。总体而言，我们的研究结果具有广泛的政策意义，并可用于优化东非的生物多样性和多种 ESs 的保护策略。
