Effectiveness of South Africa's network of protected areas: Unassessed vascular plants predicted to be threatened using deep neural networks are all located in protected areas.

ABSTRACT: Globally, we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and megadiverse countries become key targets for conservation. South Africa, the only country in the world hosting three biodiversity hotspots within its borders, harbours a tremendous diversity of at-risk species deserving to be protected. However, the lengthy risk assessment process and the lack of required data to complete assessments is a serious limitation to conservation since several species may slide into extinction while awaiting risk assessment. Here, we employed a deep neural network model integrating species climatic and geographic features to predict the conservation status of 116 unassessed plant species. Our analysis involved in total of 1072 plant species and 96,938 occurrence points. The best-performing model exhibits

SUBMITTER: Kandolo BS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11368562 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature