Fig. 3: Forest ecosystem functions in biosphere reserves.

A World map forest biomes and UNESCO biosphere reserves. Forest biomes include boreal forests/taiga, mangroves, temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, temperate conifer forests, tropical & subtropical coniferous forests, tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests, tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (Ecoregions 2017, Resolve); biosphere reserves: blue = 297 available border data; of those: yellow = 17 established after 2010; red = 119 forest covered and included in this study. B World map of ecosystem function effects in 119 biosphere reserves. The biosphere reserves served as random effects for the three modeled proxies: hot-day temperature, connectivity, and gross primary productivity with fixed effects of forest cover share, inside or outside the biosphere reserve, biome, and two periods of time 2010–2016 and 2017–2022. Each proxy’s random effects were scaled, multiplied by 255, and transformed into RGB values. The colors follow the triangle legend and show the corresponding effect sizes of the three proxies. Smaller windows show the same effects for Central America and Europe.