A new, collaborative plant-conservation study shares a surprising conclusion: Protecting 17 percent of the land on Earth could result in the preservation of 67 percent of endemic plant species, the paper states.
The study, titled “Achieving the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Goals for Plant Conservation,” was led by Microsoft researchers Lucas Joppa and Piero Visconti, Clinton N. Jenkins of North Carolina State University and Stuart L. Pimm of Duke.
“We used a combination of ‘greedy algorithms’ and ‘genetic algorithms’ to figure out how to fit as many species as possible into the smallest amount of area,” Joppa says. “Our greedy algorithm worked by picking the region with the most number of species in the smallest area and then asking which region—when added to the one already chosen—increased the number of species the most while increasing the amount of total area the least.”
The researchers analyzed data of more than 100,000 flowering-plant species, compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens in London, to determine the regions that contain the highest concentrations of endemic species relative to their geographic size. It required complex algorithms to analyze the large spatial database, which Joppa and Visconti created and ran, while Jenkins created a color-coded global map (shown above) identifying high-priority regions for plant conservation and ranked by endemic-species density.
To find out more about this research and learn more about the researchers who led the efforts, visit the Inside Microsoft Research blog.
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Jennifer Chen
Microsoft News Center Staff