Ecoregional distributions of the world's freshwater vertebrate species.

Large-scale conservation of biodiversity requires understanding how species are distributed around the world. The first global delineation of freshwater ecoregions (Abell et al. 2008) integrated hydrological boundaries and fish biogeographic patterns to recognize 426 distinctive zones.

A global clustering of terrestrial food production systems.

Food production is at the heart of global sustainability challenges, with unsustainable practices being a major driver of biodiversity loss, emissions and land degradation. The concept of foodscapes, defined as the characteristics of food production along biophysical and socio-economic gradients, could be a way addressing those challenges. By identifying homologues foodscapes classes possible interventions and leverage points for more sustainable agriculture could be identified.

The tree cover and temperature disparity in US urbanized areas: Quantifying the association with income across 5,723 communities.

Urban tree cover provides benefits to human health and well-being, but previous studies suggest that tree cover is often inequitably distributed. Here, we use National Agriculture Imagery Program digital ortho photographs to survey the tree cover inequality for Census blocks in US large urbanized areas, home to 167 million people across 5,723 municipalities and other Census-designated places. We compared tree cover to summer land surface temperature, as measured using Landsat imagery.

Protecting important sites for biodiversity contributes to meeting global conservation targets.

Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation efforts and now cover nearly 13% of the world's land surface, with the world's governments committed to expand this to 17%. However, as biodiversity continues to decline, the effectiveness of PAs in reducing the extinction risk of species remains largely untested. We analyzed PA coverage and trends in species' extinction risk at globally significant sites for conserving birds (10,993 Important Bird Areas, IBAs) and highly threatened vertebrates and conifers (588 Alliance for Zero Extinction sites, AZEs) (referred to collectively hereafter as 'important sites').

Measuring the impacts of community-based grasslands management in Mongolia's Gobi.

We assessed a donor-funded grassland management project designed to create both conservation and livelihood benefits in the rangelands of Mongolia's Gobi desert. The project ran from 1995 to 2006, and we used remote sensing Normalized Differential Vegetation Index data from 1982 to 2009 to compare project grazing sites to matched control sites before and after the project's implementation. We found that the productivity of project grazing sites was on average within 1% of control sites for the 20 years before the project but generated 11% more biomass on average than the control areas from 2000 to 2009.

Striking a balance: socioeconomic development and conservation in grassland through community-based zoning.

The goal of preserving nature is often in conflict with economic development and the aspirations of the rural poor. Nowhere is this more striking than in native grasslands, which have been extensively converted until a mere fraction of their original extent remains. This is not surprising; grasslands flourish in places coveted by humans, primed for agriculture, plantations, and settlements that nearly always trump conservation efforts.