Cost-effective priorities for prefectural biodiversity and ecosystem service conservation planning on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Biodiversity and ecosystem services are seriously threatened by human activities, and there have been calls for the expansion of protected areas (PAs) to mitigate this situation. Currently, there is an urgent need to establish new PA cost-effectively from concentrating on biodiversity to including the provision of ecosystem services. Hence, a prefectural evaluation was conducted across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) to quantify endangered species habitat provision and three key ecosystem services to identify conservation priority zones (CPZs), which were then combined with low human footprint zones to determine cost-effective zones (CEZs). A scenario simulation, which contains conservative, moderate, and ambitious targets, was further proposed to conserve more CEZs for PA design. We found that biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human footprints varied significantly among the different taxonomic groups. CPZs and CEZs cover 33 and 28 % of the QTP, respectively, including almost all forest areas, and near medium and high elevations (approximately 3000 similar to 4700 m). In comparison with existing PAs systems, the new PAs system is considering cost-effective in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services, increasing 42-60 %, 32-46 %, and 62-69 %, and 47-62 % of the important habitats that serve mammals, birds, amphibians, and plants, respectively, and promoting 48-66 % carbon service, 37-54 % soil retention, and 22-37 % water yield. More importantly, it reduces conflict with the human footprint by up to 22 %. Moreover, the conservative, moderate, and ambitious targets conserved 44, 48, and 53 % of the QTP, respectively. These three targets were set for each prefecture and prefectural-level city with spatially specific CEZs recognized, providing some implications on prefectural PAs priorities for policymakers.