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Carbon credits generated through jurisdictional-scale avoided deforestation projects require accurate estimates of deforestation emission baselines, but there are serious challenges to their robustness. We assessed the variability, accuracy, and uncertainty of baselining methods by applying sensitivity and variable importance analysis on a range of typically-used methods and parameters for 2,794 jurisdictions worldwide. The median jurisdiction’s deforestation emission baseline varied by 171% (90% range: 87%-440%) of its mean, with a median forecast error of 0.778 times (90% range: 0.548-3.56) the actual deforestation rate. Moreover, variable importance analysis emphasised the strong influence of the deforestation projection approach. For the median jurisdiction, 68.0% of possible methods (90% range: 61.1%-85.6%) exceeded 15% uncertainty. Tropical and polar biomes exhibited larger uncertainties in carbon estimations. The use of sensitivity analyses, multi-model, and multi-source ensemble approaches could reduce variabilities and biases. These findings provide a roadmap for improving baseline estimations to enhance carbon market integrity and trust.This study reveals high variability in deforestation emission baselines typically used to derive carbon credits, with median error at 0.778 times the actual rate. It underscores the need for enhanced methods to improve carbon market accuracy and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the looming land scarcity for agriculture, cropland abandonment is widespread globally. Abandoned cropland can be reused to support food security and climate change mitigation. Here, we investigate the potentials and trade-offs of using global abandoned cropland for recultivation and restoring forests by natural regrowth, with spatially-explicit modelling and scenario analysis. We identify 101 Mha of abandoned cropland between 1992 and 2020, with a capability of concurrently delivering 29 to 363 Peta-calories yr-1 of food production potential and 290 to 1,066 MtCO2 yr-1 of net climate change mitigation potential, depending on land-use suitability and land allocation strategies. We also show that applying spatial prioritization is key to maximizing the achievable potentials of abandoned cropland and demonstrate other possible approaches to further increase these potentials. Our findings offer timely insights into the potentials of abandoned cropland and can inform sustainable land management to buttress food security and climate goals. This work demonstrates how global abandoned cropland is an untapped land resource. If recultivated and reforested strategically, it can provide substantial carbon sequestration and food production potential to support our shared climate and food security goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large‐scale reforestation can potentially bring both benefits and risks to the water cycle, which needs to be better quantified under future climates to inform reforestation decisions. We identified 477 water‐insecure basins worldwide accounting for 44.6% (380.2 Mha) of the global reforestation potential. As many of these basins are in the Asia‐Pacific, we used regional coupled land‐climate modeling for the period 2041–2070 to reveal that reforestation increases evapotranspiration and precipitation for most water‐insecure regions over the Asia‐Pacific. This resulted in a statistically significant increase in water yield (p <.05) for the Loess Plateau–North China Plain, Yangtze Plain, Southeast China, and Irrawaddy regions. Precipitation feedback was influenced by the degree of initial moisture limitation affecting soil moisture response and thus evapotranspiration, as well as precipitation advection from other reforested regions and moisture transport away from the local region. Reforestation also reduces the probability of extremely dry months in most of the water‐insecure regions. However, some regions experience nonsignificant declines in net water yield due to heightened evapotranspiration outstripping increases in precipitation, or declines in soil moisture and advected precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon finance projects that protect tropical forests could support both nature conservation and climate change mitigation goals. Global demand for nature-based carbon credits is outpacing their supply, due partly to gaps in knowledge needed to inform and prioritize investment decisions. Here, we show that at current carbon market prices the protection of tropical forests can generate investible carbon amounting to 1.8 (±1.1) GtCO2e yr−1 globally. We further show that financially viable carbon projects could generate return-on-investment amounting to $46.0b y−1 in net present value (Asia-Pacific: $24.6b y−1; Americas: $19.1b y−1; Africa: $2.4b y−1). However, we also find that ~80% (1.24 billion ha) of forest carbon sites would be financially unviable for failing to break even over the project lifetime. From a conservation perspective, unless carbon prices increase in the future, it is imperative to implement other conservation interventions, in addition to carbon finance, to safeguard carbon stocks and biodiversity in vulnerable forests. Investing in forest protection is a way to generate tradable carbon credits to support biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Here the authors assess and map the global supply of tropical forest carbon credits with the goal of informing climate policy and investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 50 years, intensive agriculture has replaced large tracts of rainforests. Such changes in land use are driving niche-based ecological processes that determine local community assembly. However, little is known about the relative importance of these anthropogenic niche-based processes, in comparison to climatic niche-based processes and spatial processes such as dispersal limitation. In this study, we use a variation partitioning approach to determine the relative importance of land-use change (ranked value of forest loss), climatic variation (temperature and precipitation), and distance between transects, on bird beta diversity at two different spatial scales within the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot. Our results show that the drivers of local community assembly are scale dependent. At the larger spatial scale, distance was more important than climate and land use for bird species composition, suggesting that dispersal limitation over the Palk Strait, which separates the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, is the main driver of local community assembly. At the smaller scale, climate was more important than land use, suggesting the importance of climatic niches. Therefore, to conserve all species in a biodiversity hotspot, it is important to consider geographic barriers and climatic variation along with land-use change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation has the potential to enable conservation science and practice to keep pace with the escalating threats to global biodiversity, but this potential will only be realized if such innovations are designed and developed to fulfill specific needs and solve well‐defined conservation problems. We propose that business‐world strategies for assessing the practicality of innovation can be applied to assess the viability of innovations, such as new technology, for addressing biodiversity conservation challenges. Here, we outline a five‐step, "lean start‐up" based approach for considering conservation innovation from a business‐planning perspective. Then, using three prominent conservation initiatives – Marxan (software), Conservation Drones (technology support), and Mataki (wildlife‐tracking devices) – as case studies, we show how considering proposed initiatives from the perspective of a conceptual business model can support innovative technologies in achieving desired conservation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous aerial robots provide new possibilities to study the habitats and behaviors of endangered species through the efficient gathering of location information at temporal and spatial granularities not possible with traditional manual survey methods. We present a novel autonomous aerial vehicle system—TrackerBots—to track and localize multiple radio‐tagged animals. The simplicity of measuring the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values of very high frequency (VHF) radio‐collars commonly used in the field is exploited to realize a low‐cost and lightweight tracking platform suitable for integration with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Due to uncertainty and the nonlinearity of the system based on RSSI measurements, our tracking and planning approaches integrate a particle filter for tracking and localizing and a partially observable Markov decision process for dynamic path planning. This approach allows autonomous navigation of a UAV in a direction of maximum information gain to locate multiple mobile animals and reduce exploration time and, consequently, conserve on‐board battery power. We also employ the concept of search termination criteria to maximize the number of located animals within power constraints of the aerial system. We validated our real‐time and online approach through both extensive simulations and field experiments with five VHF radio‐tags on a grassland plain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly complex research questions and global challenges (e.g., climate change and biodiversity loss) are driving rapid development, refinement, and uses of technology in ecology. This trend is spawning a distinct sub‐discipline, here termed “technoecology.” We highlight recent ground‐breaking and transformative technological advances for studying species and environments: bio‐batteries, low‐power and long‐range telemetry, the Internet of things, swarm theory, 3D printing, mapping molecular movement, and low‐power computers. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize ecology by providing “next‐generation” ecological data, particularly when integrated with each other, and in doing so could be applied to address a diverse range of requirements (e.g., pest and wildlife management, informing environmental policy and decision making). Critical to technoecology's rate of advancement and uptake by ecologists and environmental managers will be fostering increased interdisciplinary collaboration. Ideally, such partnerships will span the conception, implementation, and enhancement phases of ideas, bridging the university, public, and private sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Knowing how many individuals are in a wildlife population allows informed management decisions to be made. Ecologists are increasingly using technologies, such as remotely piloted aircraft (RPA; commonly known as “drones,” unmanned aerial systems or unmanned aerial vehicles), for wildlife monitoring applications. Although RPA are widely touted as a cost‐effective way to collect high‐quality wildlife population data, the validity of these claims is unclear. Using life‐sized, replica seabird colonies containing a known number of fake birds, we assessed the accuracy of RPA‐facilitated wildlife population monitoring compared to the traditional ground‐based counting method. The task for both approaches was to count the number of fake birds in each of 10 replica seabird colonies. We show that RPA‐derived data are, on average, between 43% and 96% more accurate than the traditional ground‐based data collection method. We also demonstrate that counts from this remotely sensed imagery can be semi‐automated with a high degree of accuracy. The increased accuracy and increased precision of RPA‐derived wildlife monitoring data provides greater statistical power to detect fine‐scale population fluctuations allowing for more informed and proactive ecological management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation of the Sumatran orangutans’ (Pongo abelii) habitat is threatened by change in land use/land cover (LULCC), due to the logging of its native primary forest habitat, and the primary forest conversion to oil palm, rubber tree, and coffee plantations. Frequent LULCC monitoring is vital to rapid conservation interventions. Due to the costs of high-resolution satellite imagery, researchers are forced to rely on cost-free sources (e.g. Landsat), those, however, provide images at a moderate-to-low resolution (e.g. 15–250 m), permitting identification only general LULC classes, and limit the detection of small-scale deforestation or degradation. Here, we combine Landsat imagery with very high-resolution imagery obtained from an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). ​The UAS imagery was used as ‘drone truthing’ data to train image classification algorithms. Our results show that UAS data can successfully be used to help discriminate similar land-cover/use classes (oil palm plantationvs. reforestationvs. logged forest) with consistently high identification of over 75% on the generated thematic map, where the oil palm detection rate was as high as 89%. Because UAS is employed increasingly in conservation proWjects, this approach can be used in a large variety of them to improve land-cover classification or aid-specific mapping needs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tropical forests are crucial in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services, but at the same time, they are major sources of revenue and provide livelihoods for forest-dependent people. Hopes for the simultaneous achievement of conservation goals and poverty alleviation are therefore increasingly placed on forests used for timber extraction. Most timber exploitation is carried out unsustainably, which causes forest degradation. Two important mechanisms have emerged to promote sustainable forest management: certification and community-based forest management (CFM). We synthesize the published information about how forest certification and CFM perform in terms of environmental, social, and economic variables. With the caveat that very few published studies meet the standards for formal impact evaluation, we found that certification has substantial environmental benefits, typically achieved at a cost of reduced short-term financial profit, and accompanied by some improvement to the welfare of neighboring communities. We found that the economic and environmental benefits of CFM are understudied, but that the social impacts are controversial, with both positive and negative changes reported. We identify the trade-offs that likely caused these conflicting results and that, if addressed, would help both CFM and certification deliver the hoped-for benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil palm agriculture threatens tropical forests and biodiversity. Previous studies focused on finding ways to reduce the impacts of oil palm on biodiversity and the environment. However, the actual uptake of sustainable practices depends in part on economic demand. We undertook the first investigation on consumer attitudes and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for deforestation-free sustainable palm oil. In a sample of 251 consumers in Singapore, we found little consumer bias against palm oil per se. However, consumers had strong negative opinions toward products that cause deforestation. On average, consumers stated a WTP of 8.2-9.9% more for common palm oil-containing products that are deforestation-free. Given the current premium for segregated certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO; 1.5-5%), there is an incentive for manufacturers to use CSPO. Educational campaigns by environmental organizations and prominent advertising of CSPO usage through sustainability labels can potentially improve the economic demand for sustainable practices in oil palm agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) aims to avoid forest conversion to alternative land-uses through financial incentives. Oil-palm has high opportunity costs, which according to current literature questions the financial competitiveness of REDD+ in tropical lowlands. To understand this more, we undertook regional fine-scale and coarse-scale analyses (through carbon mapping and economic modelling) to assess the financial viability of REDD+ in safeguarding unprotected forest (30,173 ha) in the Lower Kinabatangan floodplain in Malaysian Borneo. Results estimate 4.7 million metric tons of carbon (MgC) in unprotected forest, with 64% allocated for oil-palm cultivations. Through fine-scale mapping and carbon accounting, we demonstrated that REDD+ can outcompete oil-palm in regions with low suitability, with low carbon prices and low carbon stock. In areas with medium oil-palm suitability, REDD+ could outcompete oil palm in areas with: very high carbon and lower carbon price; medium carbon price and average carbon stock; or, low carbon stock and high carbon price. Areas with high oil palm suitability, REDD+ could only outcompete with higher carbon price and higher carbon stock. In the coarse-scale model, oil-palm outcompeted REDD+ in all cases. For the fine-scale models at the landscape level, low carbon offset prices (US $3 MgCO2e) would enable REDD+ to outcompete oil-palm in 55% of the unprotected forests requiring US $27 million to secure these areas for 25 years. Higher carbon offset price (US $30 MgCO2e) would increase the competitiveness of REDD+ within the landscape but would still only capture between 69%-74% of the unprotected forest, requiring US $380–416 million in carbon financing. REDD+ has been identified as a strategy to mitigate climate change by many countries (including Malaysia). Although REDD+ in certain scenarios cannot outcompete oil palm, this research contributes to the global REDD+ debate by: highlighting REDD+ competitiveness in tropical floodplain landscapes; and, providing a robust approach for identifying and targeting limited REDD+ funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring of animal populations is essential for conservation management. Various techniques are available to assess spatiotemporal patterns of species distribution and abundance. Nest surveys are often used for monitoring great apes. Quickly developing technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to complement these ground-based surveys, especially for covering large areas rapidly. Aerial surveys have been used successfully to detect the nests of orang-utans. It is unknown if such an approach is practical for African apes, which usually build their nests at lower heights, where they might be obscured by forest canopy. In this 2-month study, UAV-derived aerial imagery was used for two distinct purposes: testing the detectability of chimpanzee nests and identifying fruiting trees used by chimpanzees in Loango National Park (Gabon). Chimpanzee nest data were collected through two approaches: we located nests on the ground and then tried to detect them in UAV photos and vice versa. Ground surveys were conducted using line transects, reconnaissance trails, and opportunistic sampling during which we detected 116 individual nests in 28 nest groups. In complementary UAV images we detected 48% of the individual nests (68% of nest groups) in open coastal forests and 8% of individual nests (33% of nest groups) in closed canopy inland forests. The key factor for nest detectability in UAV imagery was canopy openness. Data on fruiting trees were collected from five line transects. In 122 UAV images 14 species of trees ( N = 433) were identified, alongside 37 tree species ( N = 205) in complementary ground surveys. Relative abundance of common tree species correlated between ground and UAV surveys. We conclude that UAVs have great potential as a rapid assessment tool for detecting chimpanzee presence in forest with open canopy and assessing fruit tree availability. UAVs may have limited applicability for nest detection in closed canopy forest. Am. J. Primatol. 77:1122-1134, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Indonesia contributes significantly to deforestation in Southeast Asia. However, much uncertainty remains over the relative contributions of various forest-exploiting sectors to forest losses in the country. Here, we compare the magnitudes of forest and carbon loss, and forest and carbon stocks remaining within oil palm plantation, logging, fiber plantation (pulp and paper), and coal mining concessions in Indonesia. Forest loss in all industrial concessions, including logging concessions, relate to the conversion of forest to nonforest land cover. We found that the four industries accounted for ∼44.7% (∼6.6 Mha) of forest loss in Kalimantan, Sumatra, Papua, Sulawesi, and Moluccas between 2000 and 2010. Fiber plantation and logging concessions accounted for the largest forest loss (∼1.9 Mha and ∼1.8 Mha, respectively). Although the oil palm industry is often highlighted as a major driver of deforestation, it was ranked third in terms of deforestation (∼1 Mha), and second in terms of carbon dioxide emissions (∼1,300-2,350 Mt CO2). Crucially, ∼34.6% (∼26.8 Mha) of Indonesia's remaining forests is located within industrial concessions, the majority of which is found within logging concessions (∼18.8 Mha). Hence, future development plans within Indonesia's industrial sectors weigh heavily on the fate of Southeast Asia's remaining forests and carbon stocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That the Himalaya contain the basins of major rivers, regulate regional climate, and harbor rich biodiversity and varied ecosystems is well known. The perennial waters and biodiversity are closely linked to the livelihoods of over a billion people. The Himalaya are stressed because of a burgeoning human population and the escalating pressures of deforestation; urbanization; hunting; overexploitation of forests; and, more recently, intensive dam building. The cumulative effects of these forces have led to biotic extinctions and an increased frequency of hazards threatening human lives, livelihoods, and property. However, there is largely no comprehensive account of these challenges facing the Himalaya. We review and discuss the importance of the Himalaya and the need for their conservation by exploring four broad themes: (1) geobiological history, (2) present-day biodiversity, (3) why the Himalaya are worth protecting, and (4) drivers of the Himalayan change. We suggest scientific policy interventions, a strengthening of institutions, and proactive institutional networking to reverse the trend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The effectiveness of land-sharing and land-sparing approaches has been widely debated. Yet, few studies quantify the environmental and socio-economic outcomes of these approaches within a real-world landscape. Indonesia's plans to increase its palm oil production present an opportunity to investigate the potential environmental and socio-economic implications of the land-sharing and sparing approaches., We developed a computer model to simulate the expansion of oil palm agriculture in Sumatra, Indonesia, under four different scenarios distinguishable by the dominance of scheme smallholders or industrial estates: business-as-usual, BAU (25 : 75, scheme smallholders:industrial estates); high-yielding industry dominated, ESTATE (10 : 90); low-yielding smallholder dominated, SMALLHOLDER (40 : 60), high-yielding smallholder dominated, HYBRID (40 : 60; but with improved smallholder yields)., Our results reveal several trade-offs associated with varying the proportion of scheme smallholders and productivity of oil palm plantations. The ESTATE scenario (reflecting land-sparing) resulted in lowest environmental costs in terms of forest conversion, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity losses and nitrogen fertilizer usage. Additionally, infrastructural development and tax revenues were highest under the land-sparing approach, though fewer jobs were created. The SMALLHOLDER scenario (indicating land-sharing) resulted in highest environmental costs in terms of forest conversion, carbon dioxide emissions and biodiversity losses but involved more households in oil palm agriculture and thus created more employment opportunities. The HYBRID scenario ranked second best in terms of both minimizing forest loss and job creation. However, the drawbacks of this approach included high nitrogen fertilizer consumption, lower infrastructural development and lower tax revenues., Synthesis and applications. From an environmental perspective, it is far more important to implement spatial restrictions on oil palm expansion over forests since increasing the productivity of smallholdings and industrial estates among the four scenarios examined show minimal differences to biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions. The hybrid approach shows that increasing the proportion of scheme smallholders need not come at a great environmental cost for achieving Indonesia's palm oil production target. From a policy perspective, this hybrid approach requires a change in legislation to increase the minimum land area an industrial estate owner must allocate to scheme smallholders (40%), as well as increased support to improve productivity in oil palm smallholdings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of large-scale oil palm plantations in Indonesia has taken a heavy toll on forests, biodiversity, and carbon stocks but little is known about the environmental impacts from the smallholder sector. Here, we compare the magnitude of forest and carbon loss attributable to smallholdings, private enterprises, and state-owned oil palm plantations in Sumatra. During 2000-2010, oil palm development accounted for the loss of 4,744 ha of mangrove, 383,518 ha of peat swamp forest, 289, 406 ha of lowland forest, and 1,000 ha of lower montane forest. Much of this deforestation was driven by private enterprises (88.3%) followed by smallholdings (10.7%) and state-owned plantations (0.9%). Oil palm-driven deforestation in Sumatra resulted in 756-1,043 Mt of total gross carbon dioxide emissions, of which ∼90% and ∼9% can be attributed to private enterprises and smallholdings, respectively. While private enterprises are responsible for the bulk of environmental impacts, the smallholder oil palm sector exhibits higher annual rates of expansion (11%) compared to private enterprises (5%). Both sectors will need careful monitoring and engagement to develop successful strategies for mitigating future environmental impacts of oil palm expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peat swamp forests (PSFs) of Sundaland, in Southeast Asia, support many endemic freshwater fish species. However, the future of these species is in doubt, owing to ongoing PSF deforestation. Here, we show that, if cur-rent rates of PSF conversion to a predominantly agricultural mosaic landscape continue through 2050, 16 fish species may become globally extinct. In the worst-case scenario, where the rate of conversion across the region matches that of the most rapidly deforested river basin, 77% (79 of 102 species) of the narrowly adapted (steno-topic) fish species are likely to become extinct, a figure that would more than double known extinctions of the world's freshwater fishes. As indicated by our analysis, the PSFs of Indonesia's Central Kalimantan region would be most severely impacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers across the tropics propose that carbon finance could provide incentives for forest frontier communities to transition away from swidden agriculture (slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation) to other systems that potentially reduce emissions and/or increase carbon sequestration. However, there is little certainty regarding the carbon outcomes of many key land-use transitions at the center of current policy debates. Our meta-analysis of over 250 studies reporting above- and below-ground carbon estimates for different land-use types indicates great uncertainty in the net total ecosystem carbon changes that can be expected from many transitions, including the replacement of various types of swidden agriculture with oil palm, rubber, or some other types of agroforestry systems. These transitions are underway throughout Southeast Asia, and are at the heart of REDD+ debates. Exceptions of unambiguous carbon outcomes are the abandonment of any type of agriculture to allow forest regeneration (a certain positive carbon outcome) and expansion of agriculture into mature forest (a certain negative carbon outcome). With respect to swiddening, our meta-analysis supports a reassessment of policies that encourage land-cover conversion away from these [especially long-fallow] systems to other more cash-crop-oriented systems producing ambiguous carbon stock changes - including oil palm and rubber. In some instances, lengthening fallow periods of an existing swidden system may produce substantial carbon benefits, as would conversion from intensely cultivated lands to high-biomass plantations and some other types of agroforestry. More field studies are needed to provide better data of above- and below-ground carbon stocks before informed recommendations or policy decisions can be made regarding which land-use regimes optimize or increase carbon sequestration. As some transitions may negatively impact other ecosystem services, food security, and local livelihoods, the entire carbon and noncarbon benefit stream should also be taken into account before prescribing transitions with ambiguous carbon benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia is the fifth largest producer of palm oil in the world. The country's government and oil-palm farmers association target a sixfold increase of crude palm-oil production by 2020. We model the impacts of expanding oil-palm agriculture in Colombia through a spatially explicit scenario analysis. We demonstrate that the impacts of oil-palm expansion (e.g., deforestation, conversion of natural savannahs) would be minimized by establishing new plantations on pasture lands, given the low environmental value and economic utility, and the high agricultural potential of this land use. Impacts of oil-palm expansion on beef and dairy production could be compensated by improving productivity of pasture lands elsewhere. However, the profitability of oil-palm production in these areas might suffer over the long term due to high land purchase costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire is becoming a common phenomenon in Amazonian forest, modifying the structure and composition of natural assemblages. In particular, fire is known to affect patterns of bird diversity in tropical forests, but we have little understanding of the consequences of this for the functional diversity of bird assemblages. For example, frequent fires could act as an environmental filter selecting species with similar traits and, thus, producing a functional clustering pattern. Here, we used body mass, and dietary and foraging traits to calculate the functional structure of understorey bird assemblages in Amazonian forests analysed 3 years after they had passed under three disturbance levels within the 1997-1998 El- Niño period: unburned, burned once and burned twice. First, we tested whether observed levels of functional diversity were different among these forests and also from what one would expect by chance. Then, we investigated if habitat structure was able to predict changes in the functional structure of the studied bird assemblages. In general, there was no evidence of fire reducing functional diversity nor selecting species functionally more similar than expected by chance. Therefore, bird functional diversity was not different from random in unburned and burned forests. This provides some evidence in favour of high functional redundancy of bird species in the tropics, but also indicates that neutral theories of biodiversity, where processes such as dispersal and survival are more important than biological traits to community assembly, may apply to the assemblages studied. Also, we showed that bird assemblages from forests disturbed by wildfires have the tendency to be functionally overdispersed whereas assemblages from pristine forests tend to be functionally clustered. Thus, environmental structure, in part driven by forest responses to fire, is more important than simple categorical definitions of burn frequency for explaining trait-based assembly rules of understorey birds in the Amazon forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation funders require methods by which to evaluate the relative success of projects within their portfolios. One approach is to develop robust indices of success that are consistent between projects and evaluators. We used three contrasting indices to evaluate factors contributing to success of projects funded by the UK Government's Darwin Initiative. The indices were: Darwin Outputs (related to the Darwin Initiative's own method of evaluating the success of the projects it supports), Impact Assessment (based on the method developed by Mace et al. for evaluating the success of projects supported by zoos) and a Ranked Outcomes (a qualitatively ranked outcome index). We evaluated the internal consistency of the indices by comparing the assessments of multiple independent scorers. We assessed their robustness by checking for differences between indices and assessors in the success level assigned to a given project. We then used mixed effects models to analyse the factors contributing to project success, as expressed by each index, and compared the factors highlighted as important by each index. Although there were systematic differences between scorers, relative rankings between scorers were consistent. The indices were in fair agreement as to project success ranks, although the success ranks assigned by subjective ranked outcome- and output-based indices were more consistent between assessors than the impact assessment index. Higher levels of funding led to projects receiving consistently higher success scores. Other variables varied in their importance between indices, although metrics of education were consistently important. This study shows that it is possible to develop robust outcome-based indices of conservation success for comparison of projects within a funder's portfolio, although the nuances picked up by different indices suggest a need for multiple indices to capture different facets of success. We also highlight the need for thorough testing of the robustness of success indices before widespread adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary 1. The governments of Norway and Indonesia are collaborating on a REDD+ partnership that would contribute to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and peatland conversion in Indonesia. Part of this agreement requires Indonesia to implement a 2-year moratorium to suspend the issuance of new permits for conversion of peat and natural forests for forestry or agriculture. 2. This partnership offers an unprecedented opportunity for Indonesia to mitigate its deforestation and carbon emission levels. However, it has also galvanized intense debates within Indonesian society regarding the scope of the moratorium and its consequent environmental and socioeconomic ramifications. 3. We developed a web-based application for evaluating the implications and trade-offs of implementing Indonesia's forest moratorium in Kalimantan. This spatially explicit tool quantifies the moratorium's benefits for carbon conservation and its opportunity costs under alternative user-defined moratorium scenarios. This application could serve as a useful framework for understanding the costs and benefits of REDD+ implementation across Indonesia and other forest-rich tropical nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alteration of natural habitats as a result of agricultural intensification is detrimental for wildlife. There is, however, growing evidence that land use and management can be wildlife friendly. In Europe, agricultural areas cover two-thirds of the land and therefore play a major role in maintaining biodiversity. Agricultural land use is very intense in vineyard-dominated landscapes but there are no refuges for wildlife in the form of ecological compensation areas. In our study, we assessed spatial variation in abundance of salamander ( S alamandra salamandra) larvae in relation to land use and stream characteristics in vineyard-dominated landscapes. Abundance of larval salamanders depended positively on weirs, amount of riparian vegetation along the streams and environment-friendly agricultural practice in the vineyards. Surprisingly, road density also had positive effects, presumably through indirect effects (stone walls along roads may serve as refugia). Thus, abundance is determined by characteristics of both the aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Our results suggest that fire salamanders can persist in landscapes dominated by intensive agriculture like viticulture, indicate wildlife-friendly management options and highlight that man-made habitat can be valuable for wildlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) provides financial compensation to land owners who avoid converting standing forests to other land uses. In this paper, we review the main opportunities and challenges for REDD+ implementation, including expectations for REDD+ to deliver on multiple environmental and societal cobenefits. We also highlight a recent case study, the Norway-Indonesia REDD+ agreement and discuss how it might be a harbinger of outcomes in other forest-rich nations seeking REDD+ funds. Looking forward, we critically examine the fundamental assumptions of REDD+ as a solution for the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gas emissions and tropical deforestation. We conclude that REDD+ is currently the most promising mechanism driving the conservation of tropical forests. Yet, to emerge as a true game changer, REDD+ must still demonstrate that it can access low transaction cost and high-volume carbon markets or funds, while also providing or complimenting a suite of nonmonetary incentives to encourage a developing nation's transition from forest losing to forest gaining, and align with, not undermine, a globally cohesive attempt to mitigate anthropogenic climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-driven land-use changes increasingly threaten biodiversity, particularly in tropical forests where both species diversity and human pressures on natural environments are high. The rapid conversion of tropical forests for agriculture, timber production and other uses has generated vast, human-dominated landscapes with potentially dire consequences for tropical biodiversity. Today, few truly undisturbed tropical forests exist, whereas those degraded by repeated logging and fires, as well as secondary and plantation forests, are rapidly expanding. Here we provide a global assessment of the impact of disturbance and land conversion on biodiversity in tropical forests using a meta-analysis of 138 studies. We analysed 2,220 pairwise comparisons of biodiversity values in primary forests (with little or no human disturbance) and disturbed forests. We found that biodiversity values were substantially lower in degraded forests, but that this varied considerably by geographic region, taxonomic group, ecological metric and disturbance type. Even after partly accounting for confounding colonization and succession effects due to the composition of surrounding habitats, isolation and time since disturbance, we find that most forms of forest degradation have an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on tropical biodiversity. Our results clearly indicate that when it comes to maintaining tropical biodiversity, there is no substitute for primary forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent mass fruiting of forest trees in Borneo is an urgent wakeup call: existing policy instruments, financial mechanisms, and forestry infrastructure are inadequate to take full advantage of these infrequent opportunities for forest restoration and conservation. Tropical forest restoration can provide substantial benefits for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and poverty alleviation. Yet the unpredictability of the synchronized flowering and consequent mass fruiting of many forest trees in Borneo presents a distinctive set of challenges for forest restoration. Significant financing and a considerable coordinated effort are required to prepare for future mass fruiting events if we are to capitalize on opportunities for ecological restoration. The continued high rate of forest clearance in this region and the rarity of mass fruiting events suggest that there may be few remaining opportunities to prevent widespread species extinctions. In this article we propose a facilitatory policy framework for forest restoration in Borneo to stimulate action in advance of the next mass fruiting of forest trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess the impact of habitat fragmentation on tropical avian communities, we sampled lowland forest birds on six land-bridge islands and two mainland forest sites in Lake Kenyir, Peninsular Malaysia using timed point counts, hypothesizing that insectivorous birds are the worst affected guild. We used an information-theoretic approach to evaluate the effects of area, isolation, primary dietary guild (omnivore, frugivore and insectivore) and their interactions in predicting species richness, abundance and diversity. Our analysis showed that a model that considered the effects of area, dietary guild and their interaction best explained observed patterns of species richness. But a model considering both area and dietary guild best explained the variation in abundance. Notably, insectivorous birds were singled out as the dietary guild most sensitive to fragmentation, followed by frugivorous and omnivorous birds and hence provide support for our hypothesis. Assemblages of insectivorous birds were clearly depauperate on anthropogenic forest islands in Lake Kenyir and are consistent with forest fragmentation studies in the Neotropics. Given their specialized foraging ecology and diversity, conservation of intact communities of insectivorous bird guilds in Malaysia will be critical for maintaining predator–prey interactions in lowland tropical forests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

1. Species–area (SA) models have often been used to predict biodiversity loss resulting from habitat loss. This application of SA models hinges on two fundamental assumptions: the resultant landscape matrix is inhospitable to the taxa of interest; and edge effects do not factor into extinction risks. Despite growing consensus that these assumptions are unrealistic, the SA approach continues to be used in assessments of biodiversity decline and conservation planning. 2. We propose an overhaul of the SA approach by accounting for taxon-specific responses to landscape-specific matrix quality and deleterious effects of habitat edges. We pitted nine variants of an improved SA model (calibrated for edge and/or matrix) against two variants of the conventional model (calibrated with island or continental z values) to predict species extinction and endangerment in 15 tropical biodiversity hotspots. 3. The matrix-calibrated SA model received the highest Akaike’s Information Criterion weight (birds: 66·8%; mammals: 63·3%), which reflects the weight of evidence in support of it being the most parsimonious model given the set of candidate models and data considered. Additionally, the matrix-calibrated (MC) model produced species extinction predictions that were the most accurate and least biased. 4. The second best model (for both birds and mammals) was one that simultaneously corrected for matrix and edge effects. 5. The conventional SA model (particularly when calibrated with an island z value) performed worse than the matrix-calibrated and/or edge-corrected models. 6. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that accounting for the landscape matrix per se is a sufficient and significant improvement to the SA approach in terms of assessing species extinction risks from land-use change. More importantly, given that the MC model was also the most parsimonious model (in that it requires only one additional model parameter than the conventional SA model), it could prove to be a cost-effective heuristic tool for conservation scientists and decision makers to accurately evaluate extinction risks resulting from land-use decisions. We argue that, henceforth, the MC model, which takes account of both the extent of deforestation and quality of the resultant matrix, should replace the conventional SA model for predicting biodiversity loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The impacts of tropical deforestation and forest degradation on SE Asia's biotas have been documented, but a quantitative synthesis is currently lacking. We examined the responses of biodiversity to anthropogenic forest disturbance by comparing key ecological attributes between undisturbed and neighboring disturbed forests. Based on data from four taxonomic groups (vascular plants, invertebrates, birds, and mammals), six broad measures of ‘ecological health’ ( e.g., richness, abundance, and demographics), and a range of different impact types from 120 articles published, we calculated the proportion of pairwise comparisons in which the measure of ecological health was lower in impacted than in pristine sites, as would be expected if forest disturbance was detrimental. The explanatory power of correlates of disturbance sensitivity was assessed using an information-theoretic evaluation of a candidate set of generalized linear models (GLMs). Overall, 73.6 percent (95% CI = 70.8–76.2%) of 1074 pairwise comparisons supported the expectation that forest disturbance was detrimental to ecological health, with mammals being the most sensitive group. The median effect size was for pristine areas to have 22.2 percent higher ecological health than equivalent disturbed areas. The most responsive measure of ecological health was species richness (median = 28.6% higher in pristine), and agricultural areas were the most ecologically degraded (median = 35.6% higher in pristine). However, the GLMs revealed no marked differences overall between taxonomic groups, habitat impact types, or ecological health measures. Our finding implies that the sensitivity of biodiversity to forest disturbance is moderately high, but essentially universal, suggesting urgent forest conservation actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil palm is one of the world's most rapidly expanding equatorial crops. The two largest oil palm-producing countries—Indonesia and Malaysia—are located in Southeast Asia, a region with numerous endemic, forest-dwelling species. Oil palm producers have asserted that forests are not being cleared to grow oil palm. Our analysis of land-cover data compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization suggests that during the period 1990–2005, 55%–59% of oil palm expansion in Malaysia, and at least 56% of that in Indonesia occurred at the expense of forests. Using data on bird and butterfly diversity in Malaysia's forests and croplands, we argue that conversion of either primary or secondary (logged) forests to oil palm may result in significant biodiversity losses, whereas conversion of pre-existing cropland (rubber) to oil palm results in fewer losses. To safeguard the biodiversity in oil palm-producing countries, more fine-scale and spatially explicit data on land-use change need to be collected and analyzed to determine the extent and nature of any further conversion of forests to oil palm; secondary forests should be protected against conversion to oil palm; and any future expansion of oil palm agriculture should be restricted to pre-existing cropland or degraded habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid losses and degradation of natural habitats in the tropics are driving catastrophic declines and extinctions of native biotas, including angiosperms. Determining the ecological and life-history correlates of extinction proneness in tropical plant species may help reveal the mechanisms underlying their responses to habitat disturbance, and assist in the pre-emptive identification of species at risk from extinction. We determined the predictors of extinction proneness in 1884 locally extinct ( n = 454) and extant ( n = 1430) terrestrial angiosperms (belonging to 43 orders, 133 families, and 689 genera) in the tropical island nation of Singapore (699.4 km2), which has lost 99.6% of its primary lowland evergreen rainforest since 1819. A wide variety of traits such as geographical distribution, pollination system, sexual system, habit, habitat, height, fruit/seed dispersal mechanism, and capacity for vegetative re-sprouting were used in the analysis. Despite controlling for phylogeny (as approximated by family level classification), we found that only a small percentage of the variation in the extinction probability could be explained by these factors. Epiphytic, monoecious, and hermaphroditic species and those restricted to inland forests have higher probabilities of extinction. Species dependent on mammal pollinators also probably have higher extinction probabilities. More comparative studies that use species traits to identify extinction-prone plant species are needed to guide the enormous, but essential task of identifying species most in need of conservation action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a study which explores the effectiveness of forest reserves, fragments, and urban parks in conserving butterfly diversity in a highly urbanized tropical landscape. The environmental factors that affect the distribution of butterflies across the habitats are outlined. The number of potential larval host plant species and isolation from forests is also explored through regression analyses.

The purpose of our research was to explore the limits of rat-python- Sarcocystis distribution among rats on the offshore tropical islands of Singapore, and to examine the effect of island size, insular isolation, landscape peculiarities and anthropogenic disturbance. Commensal rats ( Rattus rattus) inhabited all of these islands, regardless of the island's size, proximity to the mainland, biogeographic features, and/or degree of anthropogenic interference. Rats caught on Sakijang Pelepah Island had well deliminated white bellies that are similar to those of sylvatic or feral rats. The prevalence of Sarcocystis spp. on individual islands ranged from 57 to 100%. This is consistent with the range found in forested habitats on Singapore Island. It also exhibited a similar diversity to Sarcocystis spp. and the predominance of Sarcocystis singaporensis. On Sakijang Pelepah Island, one rat (white bellied) was exceptionally heavily infected with both Sarcocystis villivilosi and Sarcocystis sulawesiensis. The muscles of the rats from nearly all of the islands contained immature sarcocysts, which implies that active transmission is taking place on these islands. This suggests that reticulated pythons ( Python reticulatus), which are the definitive hosts of rat Sarcocystis, might have been established or frequented in all the islands of Singapore. Our study shows that the Sarcocystis infection load of the rats was negatively correlated with human disturbance, hinting that human disturbance restricts the pythons’ mobility and thus, reduces infection of Sarcocytis in the islands rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim The primary objective of our study was to examine the factors affecting the distribution of vascular plants, springtails, butterflies and birds on small tropical islands to understand how different groups of organisms with distinct biological traits respond to biogeographical variables, such as island area. Location The Republic of Singapore (103°50′E, 1°20′N) located at the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia. Methods Seventeen islands were surveyed for vascular plants, springtails, butterflies and birds. Correlation analysis, simple linear and multiple regression analyses and the nestedness index were used to test the hypotheses that (1) area is the best predictor of species/genus richness at both the community and specific/generic levels; (2) there is no correlation between population density and island area; and (3) species/genera are distributed as nested subsets. Results Area was the most significant factor in determining the island distribution of springtails, butterflies and birds at both the community and specific/generic levels, although there were disparate responses to the biogeographical variables between the three taxonomic groups, as well as between common species within each group. Individual species displayed disparate responses to biogeographical variables, suggesting that patterns of distribution at the community level may not be a good indicator of the population dynamics of individual species/genera. Plant species richness did not show any correlation with any of the tested variables. Population densities of springtails, butterflies and birds were positively correlated with area, contradicting the assumption of the equilibrium theory of island biogeography that population density of island species is independent of area. Population densities of plants showed no correlation with any of the tested biogeographical variables. Vascular plant, springtail, butterfly and bird communities on the islands showed... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant phenology is closely related to light availability as diurnal and seasonal cycles are essential environmental cues for organizing bio-ecological processes. The natural cycles of light, however, have been dramatically disrupted by artificial light at night (ALAN) due to recent urbanization. The influence on plant phenology of ALAN and its spatial variation remain largely unknown. By analyzing satellite data on ALAN intensity across the United States, here, we showed that ALAN tended to advance the start date of the growing season (SOS), although the overall response of SOS to ALAN was relatively weak compared with other potential factors (e.g., preseason temperature). The phenological impact of ALAN showed a spatially divergent pattern, whereby ALAN mainly advanced SOS at climatically moderate regions within the United States (e.g., Virginia), while its effect was insignificant or even reversed at very cold (e.g., Minnesota) and hot regions (e.g., Florida). Such a divergent pattern was mainly attributable to its high sensitivity to chilling insufficiency, where the advancing effect on SOS was only triggered on the premise that chilling days exceeded a certain threshold. Other mechanisms may also play a part, such as the interplay among chilling, forcing and photoperiod and the difference in species life strategies. Besides, urban areas and natural ecosystems were found to suffer from similar magnitudes of influence from ALAN, albeit with a much higher baseline ALAN intensity in urban areas. Our findings shed new light on the phenological impact of ALAN and its relation to space and other environmental cues, which is beneficial to a better understanding and projection of phenology changes under a warming and urbanizing future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the opportunities and costs associated with biofuel production and use. It discusses the origins of biofuels from biological feedstocks, its benefits including reduced global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reduced dependency on foreign oil and rural development, and its environmental costs of land use change and losses of natural ecosystems and land . Societal costs are said to concern risks of malnutrition and food deprivation due to rising food prices.