Mapping More of Terrestrial Biodiversity for Global Conservation Assessment

M anagement action to conserve biodiversity is most appropriately planned and implemented at regional or local scales. However, conservation assessments at a global scale can help to justify and stimulate such local activity by providing a big-picture perspective on the current and projected status of biodiversity on the planet. Such assessments may also be used to guide the allocation of conservation resources globally and to provide a broad context within which to evaluate regional-scale conservation prior-ities. All global conservation assessments-whether focused on the coverage of protected areas (Rodrigues et al. 2004a), the impacts of habitat loss This knowledge of biodiversity pattern provides the essential foundation on which to build more sophisticated assessments of ecological, evolutionary, and socioeconomic processes.