1Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
2Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, National University of Singapore, 117546, Singapore
3Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS) and School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD 4878, Australia
4World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Washington, DC 20037, USA
5Department of Environmental Systems Science, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich (ETH Zurich), Zurich 8092, Switzerland
Available online 11 June 2013.
Highlights
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Southeast Asia has the highest rates of forest degradation and conversion in the tropics.
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New research shows that forest conversion to cropland, especially oil palm, results in much greater losses of biodiversity than does even intensive logging.
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There is little evidence that crops such as oil palm or rubber can be grown in ways that sustain forest-dependent species.
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Preventing the conversion of logged forest to cropland should be a top priority of conservationists; moreover, it provides a cost-effective way to protect much (but not all) of the forest biodiversity of the region.
In 2004, Navjot Sodhi and colleagues warned that logging and agricultural conversion of Southeast Asia's forests were leading to a biodiversity disaster. We evaluate this prediction against subsequent research and conclude that most of the fauna of the region can persist in logged forests. Conversely, conversion of primary or logged forests to plantation crops, such as oil palm, causes tremendous biodiversity loss. This loss is exacerbated by increased fire frequency. Therefore, we conclude that preventing agricultural conversion of logged forests is essential to conserving the biodiversity of this region. Our analysis also suggests that, because Southeast Asian forests are tightly tied to global commodity markets, conservation payments commensurate with combined returns from logging and subsequent agricultural production may be required to secure long-term forest protection. Keywords
Tropical peat carbon compound composition (CCC) is a highly understudied subject. Advanced understanding of peat CCC and carbon dynamics in differing conditions is desperately needed due to large-scale utilization of these peatlands. We studied the CCC—i.e. the hemicellulosic carbohydrate and uronic acid composition and concentrations of extractives, cellulose, acid-soluble lignin and acid-insoluble lignin—in association with peat profile depth and physical structure of peat, under representative, common land uses. Samples were gathered from an undrained forest and three sites altered 20–30 years prior to the study, which in aggregate form a continuum of increasing land-use intensity (drainage-affected forest; drained and deforested degraded open site; drained and deforested site under cultivation) in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Peat samples were taken from depths between 10 and 115 cm that covered mostly oxic, frequently waterlogged and permanently waterlogged, anoxic conditions. Our results demonstrated greater modification of peat properties when both vegetation and hydrological conditions were altered. The differences between sites were mainly present in the topmost peat and decreased with depth. Peat located at the surface contained more labile compounds (hemicelluloses, extractives, uronic acids, cellulose) on forest sites than at the most intensively altered open sites, where peat was enriched with recalcitrant acid insoluble lignin. The effect of drainage was evident in the drained forest site, where at the approximate median water table depth peat more closely resembled open sites in terms of the peat properties. The increased recalcitrance of peat in reclaimed areas has been a result of enhanced decomposition, reduced litter input rates and, at open sites also by repeated fires. References
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