DOI: 10.5061/dryad.6hdr7sr0h
title: Retaining natural vegetation to safeguard biodiversity and humanity

description: Humanity is on a pathway of unsustainable loss of the natural systems upon
 which we, and all life, rely. To date, global efforts to deliver
 internationally-agreed goals to reduce carbon emissions, halt biodiversity
 loss, and retain essential ecosystem services, have been poorly
 integrated. All these goals rely in part on preserving natural (e.g.
 native, largely unmodified) and semi-natural (e.g. under some form of
 low-intensity/sustainable human use) forests, woodlands and grasslands.
 Here, we show how to unify these goals by empirically deriving spatially
 explicit, quantitative area-based targets for the retention of natural and
 semi-natural (e.g. native) terrestrial vegetation. We found that at least
 67 million km2 of Earth's terrestrial vegetation (∼79% of the area of
 vegetation remaining) requires retention – via sustainable and appropriate
 land use and management – to contribute to biodiversity, climate, soil and
 freshwater objectives under four United Nations Resolutions. This equates
 to retaining natural and semi-natural vegetation across at least 50% of
 the total terrestrial (excluding Antarctica) surface of Earth. Our results
 show where retention efforts could contribute to multiple goals
 simultaneously. Such management can and should co-occur alongside and be
 driven by the people who live in and rely on places where natural and
 sustainably managed vegetation remains in situ, and must be complemented
 by restoration and appropriate management of more human-modified
 environments, if global goals are to be realised.
description: The data in this repository were produced for a global spatial
 analysis of where and how much terrestrial ecosystems need to be retained
 on Earth to achieve multiple nature conservation and ecosystem service
 goals. First, publicly-available (or available on request) datasets
 representing key sites for the achievement of four environmental
 'targets' (biodiversity, carbon, soil and freshwater) were
 overlaid on a map of remaining terrestrial ecosystems (see associated
 article for definitions and input data). This was done to determine the
 extent and location of terrestrial ecosystems that need retention to
 contribute to these respective targets' achievement. This spatial
 analysis allowed for the production of four terrestrial ecosystem
 retention maps, which, when overlaid on one another, allowed for the
 calculation of the total amount of terrestrial ecosystem retention
 required to synergistically help achieve all four targets. From this
 overlay map, the amount of terrestrial ecosystem retention by country was
 also calculated. This study highlights that much of the world's
 remaining terrestrial ecosystems need to be retained – kept in-situ –
 through protection and sustainable use, if global environmental objectives
 are to be achieved. All of the datasets used to produce
 the four terrestrial ecosystem retention maps are publicly available or
 can be sourced upon request (see associated article for specific
 details). The key results presented in the above
 mentioned manuscript were derived from quantifying the area of ecosystem
 retention (using geospatial analytical software), and mapping the location
 of ecosystem retention, for the four broad environmental
 imperatives.
description: The ArcGIS rasters available in this repository represent
 terrestrial ecosystems (see above mentioned manuscript for definitions and
 input data) that need to be retained to contribute, respectively, to
 global environmental targets for biodiversity, carbon, soil and
 freshwater. A raster map produced by overlapping all four rasters is also
 provided. The vector map of jurisdictional boundaries was used to extract
 retention extent by nation.