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| The world’s forests are crucially important for both biodiversity conservation and climate
mitigation. New forest status and forest change spatial layers using remotely sensed
data have revolutionised forest monitoring globally, and provide fine-scale deforestation
alerts that can be actioned in near-real time. However, existing products are restricted
to representing tree cover and do not reflect the considerable spatial variation in the
biological importance of forests. Here we link modelled biodiversity values to remotely
sensed data on tree cover to develop global maps of forest biodiversity significance
(based on the rarity-weighted richness of forest mammal, bird, amphibian and conifer
species) and forest biodiversity intactness (based on the modelled relationship between
anthropogenic pressures and community intactness). The strengths and weaknesses of
these products for policy and local decision-making are reviewed and we map out future
improvements and developments that are needed to enhance their usefulness. | |
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