High exposure of global tree diversity to human pressure

Significance Earth’s tree diversity is crucial for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Using species range estimates for 46,752 tree species, we find that an average of 50.2% of a tree species’ range occurs in 110-km grid cells without any protected areas, with a total of 6,377 small-range tree species entirely unprotected, and that 83% of tree species experience nonnegligible human pressure across their range on average. Protecting additional areas selected to optimally cover multiple dimensions of tree diversity would strongly improve this situation. Our results highlight the need for strengthening efforts to protect tree diversity via increased coverage of protected areas through well-targeted conservation actions as well as integration of tree diversity into restoration efforts in human-dominated landscapes.

• Publication year

  2022

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2022-06-16

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.2026733119PMID 35709320PMCID 9231180
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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