title: Representation of critical natural capital in China.
abstract: Traditional means of assessing representativeness of conservation value in protected areas depend on measures of structural biodiversity. The effectiveness of priority conservation areas at representing critical natural capital (CNC) (i.e., an essential and renewable subset of natural capital) remains largely unknown. We analyzed the representativeness of CNC-conservation priority areas in national nature reserves (i.e., nature reserves under jurisdiction of the central government with large spatial distribution across the provinces) in China with a new biophysical-based composite indicator approach. With this approach, we integrated the net primary production of vegetation, topography, soil, and climate variables to map and rank terrestrial ecosystems capacities to generate CNC. National nature reserves accounted for 6.7% of CNC-conservation priority areas across China. Considerable gaps (35.2%) existed between overall (or potential) CNC representativeness nationally and CNC representation in national reserves, and there was significant spatial heterogeneity of representativeness in CNC-conservation priority areas at the regional and provincial levels. For example, the best and worst representations were, respectively, 13.0% and 1.6% regionally and 28.9% and 0.0% provincially. Policy in China is transitioning toward the goal of an ecologically sustainable civilization. We identified CNC-conservation priority areas and conservation gaps and thus contribute to the policy goals of optimization of the national nature reserve network and the demarcation of areas critical to improving the representativeness and conservation of highly functioning areas of natural capital. Moreover, our method for assessing representation of CNC can be easily adapted to other large-scale networks of conservation areas because few data are needed, and our model is relatively simple.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing, 100875, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Yihe
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lü
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Tourism and Environment College of Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710119, China.
authors.forename: Liwei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing, 100875, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Bojie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: CzechGlobe - Global Change Research Institute, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Bělidla 986/4a, 60300, Brno, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Whitham
authors.affiliation: State Engineering Laboratory of Southern Forestry Applied Ecology and Technology, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, Hunan, 410004, China.
authors.forename: Shuguang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Bingfang
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D002681:China; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012987:Soil
chemical_list: D012987:Soil
keywords: biophysical assessment; conservation gaps; escala espacial; establecimiento de prioridades; planeación sistemática de la conservación; priority setting; spatial scale; systematic conservation planning; vacíos de conservación; valoración biofísica