An Operational framework for defining and monitoring forest degradation
Ian D. Thompson,Manuel R. Guariguata,Kimiko Okabe,Carlos Bahamondez,Robert Nasi,Victoria Heymell,César Sabogal +6 more
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TLDR
In this article, the authors suggest that there are types of forest degradation that produce a continuum of decline in provision of ecosystem services, from those in primary forests through various forms of managed forests to deforestation.Abstract:
Forest degradation is broadly defined as a reduction in the capacity of a forest to produce ecosystem services such as carbon storage and wood products as a result of anthropogenic and environmental changes. The main causes of degradation include unsustainable logging, agriculture, invasive species, fire, fuelwood gathering, and livestock grazing. Forest degradation is widespread and has become an important consideration in global policy processes that deal with biodiversity, climate change, and forest management. There is, however, no generally recognized way to identify a degraded forest because perceptions of forest degradation vary depending on the cause, the particular goods or services of interest, and the temporal and spatial scales considered. Here, we suggest that there are types of forest degradation that produce a continuum of decline in provision of ecosystem services, from those in primary forests through various forms of managed forests to deforestation. Forest degradation must be measured against a desired baseline condition, and the types of degradation can be represented using five criteria that relate to the drivers of degradation, loss of ecosystem services and sustainable management, including: productivity, biodiversity, unusual disturbances, protective functions, and carbon storage. These criteria are not meant to be equivalent and some might be considered more important than others, depending on the local forest management objectives. We propose a minimum subset of seven indicators for the five criteria that should be assessed to determine forest degradation under a sustainable ecosystem management regime. The indicators can be remotely sensed (although improving calibration requires ground work) and aggregated from stand to management unit or landscape levels and ultimately to sub-national and national scales.read more
Citations
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Classifying drivers of global forest loss
TL;DR: Using satellite imagery, a forest loss classification model is developed to determine a spatial attribution of forest disturbance to the dominant drivers of land cover and land use change over the period 2001 to 2015 and indicates that 27% of global forest loss can be attributed to deforestation through permanent land use changes for commodity production.
Book
Plantation Forests and Biodiversity: Oxymoron or Opportunity?
G.Brockerhoff Eckehard,Hervé Jactel,A.Parrotta John,P.Quine Christopher,Jeffrey Sayer,L.Hawksworth David +5 more
TL;DR: In this article, a comprehensive review of the function of plantation forests as habitat compared with other land cover, examine the effects on biodiversity at the landscape scale, and synthesise context-specific effects of plantation forestry on biodiversity.
Journal ArticleDOI
The exceptional value of intact forest ecosystems
James E. M. Watson,James E. M. Watson,Tom Evans,Oscar Venter,Brooke Williams,Brooke Williams,Ayesha I. T. Tulloch,Ayesha I. T. Tulloch,Claire Louise Stewart,Ian D. Thompson,Justina C. Ray,Kris A. Murray,Alvaro Salazar,Clive McAlpine,Peter Potapov,Joe Walston,John G. Robinson,Michael Painter,David Wilkie,Christopher E. Filardi,William F. Laurance,Richard A. Houghton,Sean L. Maxwell,Hedley S. Grantham,Hedley S. Grantham,Cristián Samper,Stephanie Wang,Lars Laestadius,Rebecca K. Runting,Gustavo A. Silva-Chávez,Jamison Ervin,David B. Lindenmayer +31 more
TL;DR: It is argued that maintaining and, where possible, restoring the integrity of dwindling intact forests is an urgent priority for current global efforts to halt the ongoing biodiversity crisis, slow rapid climate change and achieve sustainability goals.
Journal ArticleDOI
Robust monitoring of small-scale forest disturbances in a tropical montane forest using Landsat time series
TL;DR: In this article, a robust data-driven method to track tropical deforestation and degradation based on Landsat time series data is presented, where change magnitude, calculated based on differences between observed and expected values in a monitoring period, was found to be an essential predictor variable for disturbances.
References
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TL;DR: Drafting Authors: Neil Adger, Pramod Aggarwal, Shardul Agrawala, Joseph Alcamo, Abdelkader Allali, Oleg Anisimov, Nigel Arnell, Michel Boko, Osvaldo Canziani, Timothy Carter, Gino Casassa, Ulisses Confalonieri, Rex Victor Cruz, Edmundo de Alba Alcaraz, William Easterling, Christopher Field, Andreas Fischlin, Blair Fitzharris.
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Effects of Habitat Fragmentation on Biodiversity
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that the term "fragmentation" should be reserved for the breaking apart of habitat, independent of habitat loss, and that fragmentation per se has much weaker effects on biodiversity that are at least as likely to be positive as negative.
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Biotic invasions: causes, epidemiology, global consequences, and control
Richard N. Mack,Daniel Simberloff,W. Mark Lonsdale,Harry C. Evans,M. N. Clout,Fakhri A. Bazzaz +5 more
TL;DR: Given their current scale, biotic invasions have taken their place alongside human-driven atmospheric and oceanic alterations as major agents of global change and left unchecked, they will influence these other forces in profound but still unpredictable ways.
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Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–ecological Systems
TL;DR: The concept of resilience has evolved considerably since Holling's (1973) seminal paper as discussed by the authors and different interpretations of what is meant by resilience, however, cause confusion, and it can be counterproductive to seek definitions that are too narrow.
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A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests
Yude Pan,Richard Birdsey,Jingyun Fang,Jingyun Fang,Richard A. Houghton,Pekka E. Kauppi,Werner A. Kurz,Oliver L. Phillips,Anatoly Shvidenko,Simon L. Lewis,Josep G. Canadell,Philippe Ciais,Robert B. Jackson,Stephen W. Pacala,A. David McGuire,Shilong Piao,Aapo Rautiainen,Stephen Sitch,Daniel J. Hayes +18 more
TL;DR: The total forest sink estimate is equivalent in magnitude to the terrestrial sink deduced from fossil fuel emissions and land-use change sources minus ocean and atmospheric sinks, with tropical estimates having the largest uncertainties.