Journal ArticleDOI
On the hope for biodiversity-friendly tropical landscapes.
Felipe P. L. Melo,Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez,Lenore Fahrig,Miguel Martínez-Ramos,Marcelo Tabarelli +4 more
TLDR
This work examines key forces affecting the dynamics of HMLs, and proposes a framework connecting human disturbances, land use, and prospects for both tropical biodiversity and ecosystem services, and offers a conceptual model describing potential successional trajectories.Abstract:
With the decreasing affordability of protecting large blocks of pristine tropical forests, ecologists have staked their hopes on the management of human-modified landscapes (HMLs) to conserve tropical biodiversity. Here, we examine key forces affecting the dynamics of HMLs, and propose a framework connecting human disturbances, land use, and prospects for both tropical biodiversity and ecosystem services. We question the forest transition as a worldwide source of new secondary forest; the role played by regenerating (secondary) forest for biodiversity conservation, and the resilience of HMLs. We then offer a conceptual model describing potential successional trajectories among four major landscape types (natural, conservation, functional, and degraded) and highlight the potential implications of our model in terms of research agendas and conservation planning.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Multiple successional pathways in human-modified tropical landscapes: New insights from forest succession, forest fragmentation and landscape ecology research
Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez,Felipe P. L. Melo,Miguel Martínez-Ramos,Frans Bongers,Robin L. Chazdon,Jorge A. Meave,Natalia Norden,Bráulio A. Santos,Inara R. Leal,Marcelo Tabarelli +9 more
TL;DR: It is shown that secondary succession in tropical landscapes is a multifactorial phenomenon affected by a myriad of forces operating at multiple spatio‐temporal scales, and succession must be examined using more comprehensive explanatory models.
Journal ArticleDOI
Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot
Cristina Banks-Leite,Cristina Banks-Leite,Renata Pardini,Leandro Reverberi Tambosi,William D. Pearse,Adriana A. Bueno,Roberta Thomaz Bruscagin,Thais Helena Condez,Marianna Dixo,Alexandre Toshiro Igari,Alexandre Camargo Martensen,Jean Paul Metzger +11 more
TL;DR: It is shown that an annual investment equivalent to 6.5% of what Brazil spends on agricultural subsidies would revert species composition and ecological functions across farmlands to levels found inside protected areas, thereby benefiting local people, and efforts to secure the future of this and other biodiversity hotspots may be cost-effective.
Journal ArticleDOI
Experiences from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: ecological findings and conservation initiatives
TL;DR: A short description of the Atlantic Forest biota and its historical degradation is provided, conceptual models describing major shifts experienced by tree assemblages at local scales are offered and landscape ecological processes that can help to maintain this biota at larger scales are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tropical Forests in the Anthropocene
TL;DR: The Anthropocene is characterized as an epoch when human influence has begun to fundamentally alter many aspects of the Earth system and many of the planet's biomes as discussed by the authors, and it is characterized by strong interactions among different drivers, can have both large-scale and remote effects and can play out through ecological cascades over long timescales.
Journal ArticleDOI
Forest bolsters bird abundance, pest control and coffee yield.
Daniel S. Karp,Chase D. Mendenhall,Randi F. Sandi,Nicolas Chaumont,Paul R. Ehrlich,Elizabeth A. Hadly,Gretchen C. Daily +6 more
TL;DR: The value native predators provide to farmers by consuming coffee's most damaging insect pest, the coffee berry borer beetle, is quantified to demonstrate a win-win for biodiversity and coffee farmers.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities
Norman Myers,Russell A. Mittermeier,Cristina G. Mittermeier,Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca,Jennifer Kent +4 more
TL;DR: A ‘silver bullet’ strategy on the part of conservation planners, focusing on ‘biodiversity hotspots’ where exceptional concentrations of endemic species are undergoing exceptional loss of habitat, is proposed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture
TL;DR: Per capita demand for crops, when measured as caloric or protein content of all crops combined, has been a similarly increasing function of per capita real income since 1960 and forecasts a 100–110% increase in global crop demand from 2005 to 2050.
Journal ArticleDOI
Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change
David Tilman,Joseph Fargione,Brian G. Wolff,Carla M. D'Antonio,Andrew P. Dobson,Robert W. Howarth,David W. Schindler,William H. Schlesinger,Daniel Simberloff,Deborah L. Swackhamer +9 more
TL;DR: Should past dependences of the global environmental impacts of agriculture on human population and consumption continue, 109 hectares of natural ecosystems would be converted to agriculture by 2050, accompanied by 2.4- to 2.7-fold increases in nitrogen- and phosphorus-driven eutrophication of terrestrial, freshwater, and near-shore marine ecosystems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Quantifying the evidence for biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning and services.
Patricia Balvanera,A. B. Pfisterer,Nina Buchmann,Jing Shen He,Tohru Nakashizuka,David Raffaelli,Bernhard Schmid +6 more
TL;DR: The first rigorous quantitative assessment of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem process rates through meta-analysis of experimental work spanning 50 years to June 2004 shows that biodiversity effects are weaker if biodiversity manipulations are less well controlled.
Journal ArticleDOI
The merging of community ecology and phylogenetic biology
TL;DR: Several key areas are reviewed in which phylogenetic information helps to resolve long-standing controversies in community ecology, challenges previous assumptions, and opens new areas of investigation.