DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn90h
title: Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) R package, KBAscope, application to Greece

description: Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) represent the largest global network of
 sites critical to the persistence of biodiversity, which have been
 identified against standardised quantitative criteria. Sites that hold
 very high biodiversity value or potential are given specific attention on
 site-based conservation targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global
 Biodiversity Framework (GBF), and KBAs are already used in indicators for
 the GBF and the Sustainable Development Goals. However, most of the
 species that trigger KBA status are birds and to maximise benefits for
 biodiversity under the actions taken to fulfil the GBF, countries need to
 update their KBAs to represent important sites across multiple taxa. Here
 we introduce KBAscope, an R package to identify potential KBAs using
 multiple taxonomic groups. KBAscope provides flexible, user-friendly
 functions to edit species data (population, range maps, area of occupancy,
 area of habitat and localities); apply KBA criteria; and generate outputs
 to support the delineation and validation of KBAs. The details of the
 analysis - such as the spatial units tested or the KBA criteria applied -
 can be decided according to the scope of the analysis. We demonstrate the
 functionality of KBAscope by using it to identify potential KBAs in Greece
 based on multiple terrestrial taxonomic groups and four sizes of grid
 cells (4 km2, 25 km2, 100 km2, 225 km2).
description: # KBAscope application to Greece
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn90h](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn90h) KBAscope is an R package to identify potential Key Biodiverity Areas (KBAs) using multiple taxonomic groups. KBAscope provides flexible, user-friendly functions to edit species data (population, range maps, area of occupancy, area of habitat and localities); apply KBA criteria; and generate outputs to support the delineation and validation of KBAs. Here, we use KBAscope to demonstrate its functionality by identifying potential KBAs in Greece based on multiple terrestrial taxonomic groups and four sizes of grid cells (4 km2, 25 km2, 100 km2, 225 km2). ## Description of the data and file structure The data include a) range maps for 1,853 terrestrial species from the IUCN Red List (IUCN, 2023), representing all available maps for terrestrial species in Greece, regardless of the threat category; b) localities for 189 endemic species (amphibia, reptiles, orthoptera, odonata and the plant family Caryophyllaceae) from taxonomic experts; c) Area of Habitat (AoH) maps for 21 mammal species (Lumbierres et al., 2022); and d) Area of Occupancy (AOO) data for 210 endemic troglobite species (Arachnida, Diplopoda, Entognatha, Gastropoda, Hexanauplia, Insects and Malacostraca; Paragamian et al., 2018). There are three main folders: * 'spatial_units' contains the four grid cell sizes (4km2, 25km2, 100km2, 225km2); * 'species_data' contains the species distribution data per spatial unit and data type, therefore it includes 4 folders (4km2, 25km2, 100km2, 225km2) and each one of them has the same 4 folders (AOH, AOO, localities, range_maps) which contain the presence of the species used, per grid cell size according to the type of input data used; * and the folder 'results' containing the results from the application of KBAscope to Greece for each of the 4 grid cell sizes (4km2, 25km2, 100km2, 225km2). The folder includes spatial units satisfing KBA criteria for species (potential_KBAs.gpkg); the species distribution within the potential_KBAs (ptrigger_species.gpkg); an excel file of all the information needed to apply KBA criteria for the species that trigger KBA criteria (ptrigger_species.csv); and iv) a results summary excel file which includes the number of species per taxonomic group that trigger KBA criteria in each spatial unit and the spatial units that criteria B2 and B3 are triggered (results_summary.xlsx). **References:** IUCN 2023. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2022-1. [https://www.iucnredlist.org](https://www.iucnredlist.org) Lumbierres, M., Dahal, P. R., Soria, C. D., Di Marco, M., Butchart, S. H. M., Donald, P. F. and Rondinini, C. 2022. Area of Habitat maps for the world’s terrestrial birds and mammals. Scientific Data 9, 749. [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01838-w](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01838-w) Paragamian, K., Poulinakis, M., Paragkamian, S. and Nikoloudakis, I. 2018. Cave fauna of Greece database - Hellenic Institute of Speleological Research. Available at [https://database.inspee.gr/](https://database.inspee.gr/), accessed (04/2019) ## Sharing/Access information The raw data used in the analysis can be found using the links below: [www.iucnredlist.org](http://www.iucnredlist.org) [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.02v6wwq48](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.02v6wwq48)  [https://database.inspee.gr](https://database.inspee.gr) ## Code/Software The first version of KBAscope code can be found in this dataset in the related Zenodo link. For newer versions and queries for the code plese follow [https://github.com/KonstantinaSpiliopoulou/KBAscope](https://github.com/KonstantinaSpiliopoulou/KBAscope)