scholarly journals Landscape-scale forest loss as a catalyst of population and biodiversity change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gergana N. Daskalova ◽  
Isla H. Myers-Smith ◽  
Anne D. Bjorkman ◽  
Shane A. Blowes ◽  
Sarah R. Supp ◽  
...  

AbstractGlobal assessments have highlighted land-use change as a key driver of biodiversity change. However, we lack real-world global-scale estimates of how habitat transformations such as forest loss and gain are reshaping biodiversity over time. Here, we quantify the influence of 150 years of forest cover change on populations and ecological assemblages worldwide and across taxa by analyzing change in 6,667 time series. We found that forest loss simultaneously intensified ongoing increases and decreases in abundance, species richness and temporal species replacement (turnover) by up to 48%. Temporal lags in these responses extended up to 50 years and increased with species’ generation time. Our findings demonstrate that land-use change precipitates divergent population and biodiversity change, highlighting the complex biotic consequences of deforestation and afforestation.One Sentence SummaryDeclines in forest cover amplify both gains and losses in population abundance and biodiversity over time.

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 368 (6497) ◽  
pp. 1341-1347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gergana N. Daskalova ◽  
Isla H. Myers-Smith ◽  
Anne D. Bjorkman ◽  
Shane A. Blowes ◽  
Sarah R. Supp ◽  
...  

Global biodiversity assessments have highlighted land-use change as a key driver of biodiversity change. However, there is little empirical evidence of how habitat transformations such as forest loss and gain are reshaping biodiversity over time. We quantified how change in forest cover has influenced temporal shifts in populations and ecological assemblages from 6090 globally distributed time series across six taxonomic groups. We found that local-scale increases and decreases in abundance, species richness, and temporal species replacement (turnover) were intensified by as much as 48% after forest loss. Temporal lags in population- and assemblage-level shifts after forest loss extended up to 50 years and increased with species’ generation time. Our findings that forest loss catalyzes population and biodiversity change emphasize the complex biotic consequences of land-use change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lian-Zhi Huo ◽  
Luigi Boschetti ◽  
Aaron Sparks

Forest ecosystems provide critical ecosystem goods and services, and any disturbance-induced changes can have cascading impacts on natural processes and human socioeconomic systems. Forest disturbance frequency, intensity, and spatial and temporal scale can be altered by changes in climate and human activity, but without baseline forest disturbance data, it is impossible to quantify the magnitude and extent of these changes. Methodologies for quantifying forest cover change have been developed at the regional-to-global scale via several approaches that utilize data from high (e.g., IKONOS, Quickbird), moderate (e.g., Landsat) and coarse (e.g., Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)) spatial resolution satellite imagery. While detection and quantification of forest cover change is an important first step, attribution of disturbance type is critical missing information for establishing baseline data and effective land management policy. The objective here was to prototype and test a semi-automated methodology for characterizing high-magnitude (>50% forest cover loss) forest disturbance agents (stress, fire, stem removal) across the conterminous United States (CONUS) from 2003–2011 using the existing University of Maryland Landsat-based Global Forest Change Product and Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD). The Forest Cover Change maps were segmented into objects based on temporal and spatial adjacency, and object-level spectral metrics were calculated based on WELD reflectance time series. A training set of objects with known disturbance type was developed via high-resolution imagery and expert interpretation, ingested into a Random Forest classifier, which was then used to attribute disturbance type to all 15,179,430 forest loss objects across CONUS. Accuracy assessments of the resulting classification was conducted with an independent dataset consisting of 4156 forest loss objects. Overall accuracy was 88.1%, with the highest omission and commission errors observed for fire (32.8%) and stress (31.9%) disturbances, respectively. Of the total 172,686 km2 of forest loss, 83.75% was attributed to stem removal, 10.92% to fire and 5.33% to stress. The semi-automated approach described in this paper provides a promising framework for the systematic characterization and monitoring of forest disturbance regimes.


Hydrology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kosal Chim ◽  
Jon Tunnicliffe ◽  
Asaad Shamseldin ◽  
Tetsuji Ota

Siem Reap River has played a crucial role in maintaining the Angkor temple complex and livelihood of the people in the basin since the 12th century. Land use in this watershed has changed considerably over the last few decades, which is thought to have had an influence on river. This study was carried out as part of assessing the land use and climate change on hydrology of the upper Siem Reap River. The objective was to reconstruct patterns of annual deforestation from 1988 to 2018 and to explore scenarios of land use 40 and 80 years into the future. A supervised maximum likelihood classification was applied to investigate forest cover change in the last three decades. Multi-layer perceptron neural network-Markov chain (MLPNN-MC) was used to forecast land use and land cover (LULC) change for the years 2058 and 2098. The results show that there has been a significantly decreasing trend in forest cover at the rate 1.22% over the last three decades, and there would be a continuous upward trend of deforestation and downward trend of forest cover in the future. This study emphasizes the impacts of land use change on water supply for the Angkor temple complex (World Heritage Site) and the surrounding population.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Changjun Gu ◽  
Yili Zhang ◽  
Linshan Liu ◽  
Lanhui Li ◽  
Shicheng Li ◽  
...  

Land use and land cover (LULC) changes are regarded as one of the key drivers of ecosystem services degradation, especially in mountain regions where they may provide various ecosystem services to local livelihoods and surrounding areas. Additionally, ecosystems and habitats extend across political boundaries, causing more difficulties for ecosystem conservation. LULC in the Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL) has undergone obvious changes over the past four decades; however, the spatiotemporal changes of the LULC across the whole of the KSL are still unclear, as well as the effects of LULC changes on ecosystem service values (ESVs). Thus, in this study we analyzed LULC changes across the whole of the KSL between 2000 and 2015 using Google Earth Engine (GEE) and quantified their impacts on ESVs. The greatest loss in LULC was found in forest cover, which decreased from 5443.20 km2 in 2000 to 5003.37 km2 in 2015 and which mainly occurred in KSL-Nepal. Meanwhile, the largest growth was observed in grassland (increased by 548.46 km2), followed by cropland (increased by 346.90 km2), both of which mainly occurred in KSL-Nepal. Further analysis showed that the expansions of cropland were the major drivers of the forest cover change in the KSL. Furthermore, the conversion of cropland to shrub land indicated that farmland abandonment existed in the KSL during the study period. The observed forest degradation directly influenced the ESV changes in the KSL. The total ESVs in the KSL decreased from 36.53 × 108 USD y−1 in 2000 to 35.35 × 108 USD y−1 in 2015. Meanwhile, the ESVs of the forestry areas decreased by 1.34 × 108 USD y−1. This shows that the decrease of ESVs in forestry was the primary cause to the loss of total ESVs and also of the high elasticity. Our findings show that even small changes to the LULC, especially in forestry areas, are noteworthy as they could induce a strong ESV response.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Gallice ◽  
Riccardo Mattea ◽  
Allison Stoiser

ABSTRACTInsect migrations rival those of vertebrates in terms of numbers of migrating individuals and even biomass, although instances of the former are comparatively poorly documented. This is especially true in the world’s tropics, which harbor the vast majority of Earth’s insect species. Understanding these mass movements is of critical and increasing importance as global climate and land use change accelerate and interact to alter the environmental cues that underlie migration, particularly in the tropics. Here, we provide the first evidence for an insect migration for the nymphalid butterfly Panacea prola in the Amazon, the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest that is experiencing a shifting climate and rapid forest loss.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Rodrigo-Ilarri ◽  
Claudia P. Romero-Hernández ◽  
María-Elena Rodrigo-Clavero

<p>Land use in the nearby of a Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) landfill can be strongly affected by the waste management tasks (transport, landfilling and closure). Effects extend from the phases prior to the construction of the landfill until years after the completion of the landfilling process in areas located beyond the perimeter of the plot occupied by the landfill. In this work a new methodology for the analysis of land use change over time is presented. The methodology is based on the use of a new environmental index named WEI (Weighted Environmental Index). WEI is based on the use of GIS techniques accounting for different information sources (digital cartography, aerial photographs and satellite images). WEI assigns environmental values to land use based on the degree of anthropogenic intervention and its occupation surface. A georeferenced multitemporal statistical analysis is performed considering the values of WEI previously assigned to every land use. The methodology has been applied to analyze the land use change near the main MSW landfills of Valencia Region (Spain) where landfilling is currently the only waste disposal technique available. Data have been obtained from the Spanish Land Occupation Information System (SIOSE) public database and integrate GIS information about land use/land cover on an extensive, high-detailed scale. Results demonstrate the application of the WEI to real case studies and the importance of integrating statistical analysis of WEI evolution over time to arrive at a better understanding of the socio-economic and environmental processes that induce land-use change.</p>


Ecosystems ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 1056-1074
Author(s):  
Bethany J. Blakely ◽  
Adrian V. Rocha ◽  
Jason S. McLachalan

AbstractAnthropogenic land use affects climate by altering the energy balance of the Earth’s surface. In temperate regions, cooling from increased albedo is a common result of historical land-use change. However, this albedo cooling effect is dependent mainly on the exposure of snow cover following forest canopy removal and may change over time due to simultaneous changes in both land cover and snow cover. In this paper, we combine modern remote sensing data and historical records, incorporating over 100 years of realized land use and climatic change into an empirical assessment of centennial-scale surface forcings in the Upper Midwestern USA. We show that, although increases in surface albedo cooled through strong negative shortwave forcings, those forcings were reduced over time by a combination of forest regrowth and snow-cover loss. Deforestation cooled strongly (− 5.3 Wm−2) and mainly in winter, while composition shift cooled less strongly (− 3.03 Wm−2) and mainly in summer. Combined, changes in albedo due to deforestation, shifts in species composition, and the return of historical forest cover resulted in − 2.81 Wm−2 of regional radiative cooling, 55% less than full deforestation. Forcings due to changing vegetation were further reduced by 0.32 Wm−2 of warming from a shortened snow-covered season and a thinning of seasonal snowpack. Our findings suggest that accounting for long-term changes in land cover and snow cover reduces the estimated cooling impact of deforestation, with implications for long-term land-use planning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10234
Author(s):  
Javier Rodrigo-Ilarri ◽  
Claudia P. Romero ◽  
María-Elena Rodrigo-Clavero

For the first time, this paper introduces and describes a new Weighted Environmental Index (WEI) based on object-oriented models and GIS data. The index has been designed to integrate all the available information from extensive and detailed GIS databases. After the conceptual definition of the index has been justified, two applications for the regional and local scales of the WEI are shown. The applications analyze the evolution over time of the environmental value from land-use change for two different case studies in Spain: the Valencian Region and the L’Alcora municipality. Data have been obtained from the Spanish Land Occupation Information System (SIOSE) public database and integrate GIS information about land use/land cover on an extensive, high-detailed scale. Results demonstrate the application of the WEI to real case studies and the importance of integrating statistical analysis of WEI evolution over time to arrive at a better understanding of the socio-economic and environmental processes that induce land-use change.


2014 ◽  
Vol 291 ◽  
pp. 152-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prasanth Meiyappan ◽  
Michael Dalton ◽  
Brian C. O’Neill ◽  
Atul K. Jain

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominik Kaim ◽  
Jacek Kozak ◽  
Krzysztof Ostafin ◽  
Monika Dobosz ◽  
Katarzyna Ostapowicz ◽  
...  

Abstract The paper presents the outcomes of the uncertainty investigation of a long-term forest cover change analysis in the Polish Carpathians (nearly 20,000 km2) and Swiss Alps (nearly 10,000 km2) based on topographic maps. Following Leyk et al. (2005) all possible uncertainties are grouped into three domains - production-oriented, transformation- oriented and application-oriented. We show typical examples for each uncertainty domain, encountered during the forest cover change analysis and discuss consequences for change detection. Finally, a proposal for reliability assessment is presented.


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