A research team led by the University of Oxford has carried out the most comprehensive assessment to date of how logging and conversion to oil palm plantation affect tropical forest ecosystems.
A research team led by the University of Oxford has carried out the most comprehensive assessment to date of how logging and conversion to oil palm plantation affect tropical forest ecosystems. The results demonstrate that logging and conversion have significantly different and cumulative environmental impacts.
Understanding how different aspects of tropical forests are affected by logging and conversion to oil palm plantation is important for identifying priority habitats for conservation and restoration. It can also help aid decisions on land use – for instance, whether a logged forest should be protected, restored, or allowed to be converted into a plantation. But up to now, most studies have focused on a limited number of factors, making the overall impact on the whole ecosystem difficult to assess.
In this new study, the researchers looked at over 80 metrics describing multiple aspects of the structure, biodiversity and functioning of the tropical forest ecosystem – from soil nutrients and carbon storage, to photosynthesis rates and numbers of bird and bat species. These were measured in study sites in three areas of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo that were either in undisturbed old growth forest, logged forest (moderately or heavily logged) or in previous logged forests that had been converted to oil palm plantation.
Read more at University of Oxford
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