Biodiversity conservation in Kenya
Where to prioritize conservation to meet 30x30 targets
A look at protected areas globally...
Through the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre provides data on conservation areas worldwide.
protected areas
protected areas in Kenya
14% of terrestrial area in Kenya conserved, mostly under indigenous or national management.
To meet 30x30 conservation goals, Kenya will need to conserve approximately...
80,000 additional square kilometers in the next 7 years.
Which 80k square kilometers should be prioritized for conservation in Kenya?
Living Atlas Data
Data from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World can be used to identify areas of high value for conservation.
Suitability Modeling for Conservation
The ArcGIS Suitability Modeler can be used to identify optimal areas for conservation. The model can integrate layers related to biodiversity importance (species richness and rarity), ecosystem services (proximity to water and landcover type) as well as degradation (vulnerability to change. These layers are rescaled and summed to identify areas with cumulative high suitability scores. The locate regions portion of the model can then identify contiguous regions of a certain size to prioritize for conservation.
Suitability results for Kenya
Suitability for biodiversity conservation in Kenya
Southwestern Kenya shows the greatest suitabiltiy for conservation areas to conserve biodiversity. This region has both high species richness and rarity as well as lots of access to lakes and inland waterways. This area today contains a lot of forested land and shrubland but is under increasing vulnerability to change by 2050, heightening its need for conservation by 2030.
The model used a total of 5 transformed layers to identify suitable regions:
- Species richness (Half-Earth Project)
- Species rarity (Half-Earth Project)
- World distance to water (Esri)
- Landcover (European Space Agency)
- Landcover vulnerability to change (Clark Labs)
Suitable locations for biodiveristy conservation in Kenya
The model identifies 4 areas that together will help Kenya reach 30x30 by conserving an additional 80,000 square kilometers of land. Click to view attributes for each.
Suitable areas
With proper spatial planning and inclusive execution, the world can achieve its 30x30 conservation goals.