Optimizing coordination and trade-offs between food security and biodiversity conservation goals

Balancing food security and biodiversity conservation—two often conflicting objectives—is essential for achieving global goals (e.g., SDG 2 and 15; GBF Targets 1, 3, and 10). While previous studies have explored global or national-level trade-offs, there is a lack of spatially explicit, scenario-based planning frameworks at regional scales to reconcile cropland expansion and biodiversity conservation. The study develops a multi-objective spatial planning framework to assess how future cropland expansion may be optimized to reduce biodiversity impacts while ensuring food security in the northwestern dry geo-eco region of China. Using a random forest model trained with environmental, socio-economic and trend variables to project cropland expansion from 2020 to 2030 and identify areas of spatial conflict with biodiversity priority regions. Results reveal intense conflicts in ecologically sensitive areas such as the Altai and Tianshan Mountains. Under a food-security-first scenario, expandi..., , # Optimizing coordination and trade-offs between food security and biodiversity conservation goals

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.02v6wwqgn](10.5061/dryad.02v6wwqgn)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset was generated as part of the study \"Optimizing Coordination and Trade-offs between Food Security and Biodiversity Conservation Goals\" (submitted to Ecography).

The data include two raster layers:

A probability map of future cropland expansion in the northwestern dry geo-eco region of China for the period 2020–2030, produced using a Random Forest (RF) model trained with environmental, socio-economic, and trend variables.

A biodiversity conservation priority map derived from spatial prioritization analysis based on area of habitat (AOH).

These datasets were used to identify spatial conflicts between predicted cropland expansion and biodiversity priority areas, and to develop land-use planning scenarios under food security and biodiversity conservation objectives.
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