High-resolution naturalness mapping can support conservation policy objectives and identify locations for strongly protected areas in France

Abstract

Intact natural landscapes are essential to both biodiversity conservation efforts and human well-being but are increasingly threatened and lack sufficient protection. Bold National and International protected area targets aim to address this problem, yet the question remains – where will these areas be located? Using France as a case study, we present a high-resolution method to map naturalness potential. The resulting map, CARTNAT, performs well at identifying areas which have already been recognised as worthy of strong protection, under both National and International designations, however, only 1% of the top 10% of high naturalness areas in France are currently strongly protected. CARTNAT is already being used to highlight potential sites for new protected areas supporting the French National Strategy for Protected Areas to 2030. We argue that spatially informed participatory decision making of this type has the potential to deliver on national and international protected area policy objectives.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Carruthers-Jones, J. Guetté, A. Carver, S. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4202-8234 Lefebvre, T. Vallauri, D. Debeir, L. Aykroyd, T. Barthod, C. Cavallin, P. Vallée, S. Benest, F. Cherel, E. Kun, Z. Debuf, O.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Accepted: 24 February 2025 Published (online): 10 April 2025 Published: 10 April 2025
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	11 Jul 2025 10:57
Last Modified:	11 Jul 2025 10:57
Published Version:	https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02160-0
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s43247-025-02160-0
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:229052

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High-resolution naturalness mapping can support conservation policy objectives and identify locations for strongly protected areas in France

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