Our friend Andy Jarvis and co-workers recently published a paper in the Journal for Nature Conservation entitled “Assessment of threats to ecosystems in South America.” Very interesting in its own right, but check out the map below. Andy has very kindly superimposed for us the location of peanut and potato wild relatives on the ecosystem threat map from the paper. A good way to prioritize conservation? You saw it here first.
Mapping threats to crop wild relatives
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Green is potato, blue is peanut, I guess.
Interesting. The most sampled areas are actually more likely to be threatened (or more likely to be close to a threatened area). Not unexpected though. Expansion of anthropogenic activities leads to further and more detailed sampling, so you get more samples, but then more threats. It’s a cycle.
The relationship, I guess, changes when you involve the protected areas locations, so the more sampled areas become the most conserved?