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Prioritization of Areas with High Potential for Providing Ecosystem Services Using the New ‘bivariatemaps’ Package
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  • José Hidasi Neto,
  • Lucas Jardim,
  • Bruno Ribeiro,
  • Levi carina Terrible
José Hidasi Neto
Universidade Federal de Goiás

Corresponding Author:hidasineto@gmail.com

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Lucas Jardim
Universidade Federal de Jataí
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Bruno Ribeiro
Universidade Federal de Goias
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Levi carina Terrible
Universidade Federal de Goias
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Abstract

Biodiversity offers diverse ecosystem services responsible for increasing human well-being and moving financial capital around the world. Therefore, given the natural and human causes of biodiversity reduction, we need to use conservation prioritization methods that not only show where to find high species richness, but also low economic cost. In this paper, we suggest priority areas, on a global scale, for the conservation of terrestrial and flying mammals and the Serpentes, an endothermic group. We do that by finding high potential for providing ecosystem services (measured here by Species Richness) and correlating it with Economic Cost (measured as Land Acquisition Cost). To achieve this goal, we first developed the ‘bivariatemaps’ package, using it to plot bivariate maps that integrate the Species Richness with the Land Cost for each of the three studied groups. We observe that more attention should be paid to tropical countries, which have high species richness, but low land acquisition cost. We note that more attention should be paid to the Indomalayan region, which has a high richness of species low-cost sites for the conservation of species. Bivariate maps have been published in studies since the 70s, but only in the 2010s they became more used by the general public, including scientists from low-profit universities. We hope that this paper (and the ‘bivariatemaps’ package) helps to generate works planned globally and regionally in the face of natural and anthropogenic processes responsible for the loss of biodiversity that can bring us socio-economic benefits.