Global and national trends in documenting and monitoring species distributions

Abstract

Conserving and managing biodiversity in the face of ongoing global change requires sufficient evidence to assess status and trends of species distributions. Here we analyze national trajectories in closing spatiotemporal knowledge gaps for terrestrial vertebrates (1950-2019) based on novel indicators of data coverage and sampling effectiveness. Despite a rapid rise in data coverage, particularly in the last two decades, strong geographic and taxonomic biases persist. For some taxa and regions, a tremendous growth in records failed to directly translate into newfound knowledge due to a sharp decline in sampling effectiveness. But nations coverage is stronger for species they hold greater stewardship for. As countries under the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework renew their commitments to an improved, rigorous biodiversity knowledge base, our findings highlight opportunities for international collaboration to close critical information gaps.