Biodiversity conservation of a new protected area ‘Al-Arqoub’, South Jerusalem Hills, Palestine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Palestine is part of the Fertile Crescent and known to be rich in faunal and floral biodiversity relative to its latitude. The South Jerusalem hills with their ancient villages (collectively called the Al-Arqoub cluster) provide ideal areas for conservation within the Mediterranean Biodiversity Hotspot. The area was listed on an emergency basis as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014. This study assessed the biodiversity and threats, and the data was used to designate it a protected area by the Environment Quality Authority (EQA). We documented 417 plant species, 15 fungi, 105 birds, 3 amphibians, 12 reptiles and 31 mammals. Threats to this rich biodiversity included harmful agricultural practices, overexploitation, construction of Israeli settlements, urbanisation, habitat loss, land fragmentation and limited enforcement of laws. Management plans were established and began to be implemented for the site with the aim of biocultural conservation. Four marginalised communities around the valley system (Al-Walaja, Battir, Husan and Beit Jala) benefited through: a) environmentally friendly agricultural production for 81 farmers, b) developing and empowering women in eco-friendly production and marketing, c) enhancing ecotourism, d) implementing an ecosystem restoration model and e) education and capacity building leading to behaviour change. Based on IUCN criteria, we consider 'Al-Arqoub' as a vulnerable ecosystem worthy of enhanced protective status and, based on our studies, the EQA designated it as a protected area category VI (protected with sustainable use of natural resources). Protected area management in Palestine follows the new National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (2023-2030) in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This grassroots, cross-disciplinary endeavour to protect this area serves as a model for other protections in a region with economic and political instability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".