Substantial gaps between the protection of biodiversity hotspots in alpine grasslands and the effectiveness of protected areas on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China

Abstract Human activities such as livestock overgrazing, are the main reasons for the degradation of alpine grasslands and biodiversity loss on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), China. With an aim toward maintaining sustainable development of alpine grasslands, protected areas (PAs) are important for biodiversity protection and to reduce the negative impacts of human activities. This study was conducted in the east of the QTP to clarify the distribution of plant-based biodiversity hotspots of alpine grasslands and to identify gaps between biodiversity hotspots protection and the effectiveness of PAs. We found that biodiversity hotspots of alpine grasslands were located in Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze (TAPG) and the Tibetan Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Ngawa (TQAPN) in Sichuan Province, and their buffer zones were to the west of the biodiversity hotspots. PAs protected 25.93% (29.09 km 2 ) of biodiversity hotspots and 29.17% (50.36 km 2 ) of their buffer zones, respectively. Therefore, there was a substantial gap between the protection of biodiversity hotspots of alpine grasslands and the effectiveness of the PAs. According to distributions of the biodiversity hotspots and their buffer zones, re-planning the boundaries of the PAs to improve their protection effectiveness would be useful for biodiversity conservation and mitigation of alpine grassland degradation.