California supports one of the greatest displays of biodiversity in the nation and the world. The challenge posed by the 30x30 initiative, is to plan and implement conservation strategies which allow all Californians to continue to flourish and succeed, while also ensuring that we safeguard the great abundance of species which reside in this state, and in many cases, exist nowhere else on Earth.  

Maximizing the benefits of 30x30 for everyone requires, among many other factors, deliberate consideration of the landscape and the ways in which biodiversity is distributed within it. This Explorer introduces several types of biodiversity data for stakeholders to consider when engaged in conservation planning.  

The Biodiversity Explorer includes dashboards for the Areas of Conservation Emphasis (ACE) and Habitat and Land Cover datasets. These allow deeper explorations of the state’s exceptional biodiversity and the current state of conservation by land cover.

The Areas of Conservation Emphasis (ACE) dashboard presents summaries of species data collected and analyzed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) as part of its ongoing ACE project. ACE rolls multiple types of Species Richness into a Biodiversity Index, and also considers Connectivity, Climate Resilience, and Significant Habitats, all important factors to species and ecological health.  The Habitat and Land Cover dashboard presents maps and summaries of land cover according to categories defined by the California Wildlife Habitat Relationship System (CWHR) maintained by CDFW. Conserving connected networks of all land cover types is key to conserving the species which depend upon them. The Habitat and Land Cover dashboard shows the percentage that each land cover type comprises within a county or ecoregion, and the degree to which it falls within already conserved areas.