Preserving the woody plant tree of life in China under future climate and land-cover changes

The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover
changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the
post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are
fundamental for biological conservation. However, we know little about the
effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to
prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate
and land-cover changes. Here, using high-resolution distribution maps of
8732 woody species in China and phylogeny-based Zonation, we find that
current PAs perform poorly in preserving the TOL both at the present and
in the 2070s. The geographical coverage of TOL branches by current PAs is
ca. 9%, and < 3% of the identified priority areas for preserving
the TOL are currently protected. Interestingly, the geographical coverage
of TOL branches by PAs will be improved from 9% to 52–79% by the
identified priority areas for PA expansion. Human pressures in the
identified priority areas are high, leading to high costs for future PA
expansion. We thus suggest that besides nature reserves and national
parks, other effective area-based conservation measures should be
considered. Our study argues for the inclusion of preserving the TOL in
the post-2020 conservation framework and provides references for
decision-makers to preserve the Earth’s evolutionary history.