Revealing future effectiveness of protected areas for biodiversity conservation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area

The biodiversity of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is increasingly under threat due to anthropogenic stressors and climate change challenges, despite 15.72% of the landscape being planned as protected areas (PAs). The uncertain risks of high-density urban sprawl and sea level rise pose challenges for future biodiversity conservation in the GBA. To effectively gauge the impact of PAs for biodiversity conservation, it’s imperative to delve into not only the pattern but the process of biodiversity. Adopting a dynamic view for biodiversity assessment, our study established a synergistic approach within a systematic conservation planning framework, focusing on comprehensively assessing the future conservation effectiveness of PAs. Four modeling techniques were integrated in the process to estimate conservation priorities under various future scenarios: SLAMM and Dyna-CLUE projected future land-use changes, MaxEnt predicted shifts in habitat suitability for key species, and Zonation identified conservation priorities thereby. The results indicated a potential shift in conservation priorities over time from inland to coastal areas across different cities in the GBA, highlighting the substantial mismatches between current PAs and high-priority areas in Guangdong and the urgency for prompt conservation actions. Moreover, our findings revealed that proposed PA system has not sufficiently prioritized wetland conservation, nor has it effectively conserved amphibian, plant and bird species. Our study provided a dynamic and comprehensive evaluation of biodiversity in the GBA and offered insightful conservation recommendations, thus demonstrating a viable approach for assessing and enhancing future conservation initiatives in similar contexts.