One member of our team, Charlotte Horáková (Whitham) has coauthored an article in Conservation Biology on critical natural capital in China. "We first wished to explore the use of a new, simple approach to assess the representation of critical natural capital (CNC) across the landscape - with critical natural capital being the basis of ecosystem service production and realisation. Putting this method to use, in the context of conservation policy within China, we measured this representation across protected areas across the country. This has highlighted some interesting and rather concerning gaps between conservation supply and demand within the current protected area network. For example, we were able to show with our methods, that National nature reserves accounted for only 6.7% of CNC-conservation priority areas across China," Charlotte explains.

Representation of critical natural capital in China. Lü Y, Zhang L, Zeng Y, Fu B, Whitham C, Liu S, Wu B. Conservation Biology, First published: 20 February 2017, DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12897.