Reference Site Influences Perceived Species Loss in Shade Coffee, But Assemblages in Fact Depend on Landscape Context

Context: Shade coffee plantations are purported to maintain forest biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Understanding their conservation importance is hindered, however, by the limited taxa studied and failure to account for the landscape context of plantations and quality of reference sites.Objectives/Research questions: (1) how occupancy of mammals and birds changed from continuous forest to fragmented forest and coffee plantations while statistically controlling for landscape context, and (2) whether mammal and bird communities responded differently to shade coffee with regard to richness and composition.Methods: We used camera traps to sample ground-dwelling birds and medium- and large-bodied mammals (31 and 29 species, respectively) in shade coffee plantations and two types of reference forest (fragmented and continuous) in Colombia’s Western Andes. We used a multi-species occupancy model to correct for detection and to estimate occupancy, richness, and community composition.Results Shade coffee lacked ~50% of the species found in continuous forest, primarily forest-specialist insectivorous birds and forest-specialist and large-bodied mammals, resulting in different species composition between coffee and forest assemblages. Coffee plantation birds were generally a unique subset of disturbance-adapted specialists, whereas mammals in coffee were mostly generalists encountered across land uses. Forest fragments had species richness more similar to shade coffee than to continuous forest. Species sensitive to shade coffee responded negatively to isolation and disturbance at the landscape scale.Conclusions: Studies comparing coffee with relictual forest fragments may overestimate the conservation value of shade coffee. Conservation of biodiversity in shade coffee landscapes will be ineffective unless these efforts are linked to larger landscape-level conservation initiatives.

INTERSEPSI DAN ALIRAN BATANG TANAMAN KOPI DENGAN BERBAGAI NAUNGAN DI SUMBERMANJING WETAN, MALANG

The current climate change has an impact on crop production, especially coffee plants. Rainfall is one of the climate elements that influences the process of crop cultivation, because of its role in the availability of water crops. Raindrops that fall on the vegetated land cover does not directly reach to ground, but will temporarily be accommodated by a canopy, stems and plant branch. Once those places saturated with water, the raindrops will drop to the soil surface through the canopy, stem flow and partially evaporated back into the atmosphere that called interception. The study aims to determine the effect of the shade of coffee plants on the interception, and stemflow of plant canopy. As well as knowing the relationship between rainfall with throughfall, stemflow, and interception. This research was conducted at smallholder coffee plantation in Sumbermanjing Wetan District on the use of gamal shade coffee grown, sengon shade coffee grown, and sun-grown coffee. The results showed that the value of canopy throughfall in the three land uses was not statistically significantly different, but there was a tendency for monoculture coffee plants which has a greater yield that is 66,38% of the total rainfall of 15,32 mm. The highest stemflow value is in the sengon shade coffee grown of 3,07% of the total rainfall of 15,32 mm. Interception in the gamal shade coffee grown is the highest compared to other land uses that results obtained are 36,92% of the total rainfall of 17,1 mm. Rainfall has a relationship with the value of stemflow, throughfall and interception. Based on the correlation analysis test the results were significantly correlated with strong relationship.

Teenagers’ Awareness about Local Vertebrates and Their Functions: Strengthening Community Environmental Education in a Mexican Shade-Coffee Region to Foster Animal Conservation

Peoples’ understanding and appreciation of wildlife are crucial for its conservation. Nevertheless, environmental education in many tropical countries is seldom incorporated into public-school curricula and wildlife topics are often underrepresented. In this research we aimed to (1) assess the effects of an environmental education intervention focused on improving students’ awareness about wild vertebrates and their ecological functions and (2) to evaluate whether previous exposure to general environmental education could improve the effects of the intervention. We worked in four schools in a high-biodiversity shade-coffee-producing region in Mexico; two of the schools had received general environmental education as part of a Community Program, while the other two had not. In all schools we conducted a targeted intervention providing information about wild vertebrates and their ecological functions. Through questionnaires, we assessed students’ awareness before and after the intervention. We found that students’ awareness about wildlife was improved by our intervention, and that this effect was stronger in students that had attended the Community Program. Our results contribute to Sustainable Development Goals 11 and 15 by showing that targeted education interventions can help achieve specific conservation goals, and that previous community-based environmental education can condition peoples’ awareness, improving the assimilation and/or understanding of new concepts.

Soil microbial composition varies in response to coffee agroecosystem management

ABSTRACTSoil microbes are essential to the continued productivity of sustainably-managed agroecosystems. In shade coffee plantations, the relationship between soil microbial composition, soil nutrient availability, and coffee productivity have been demonstrated, but the effect of management on the composition of the soil microbial communities remains relatively unexplored. To further understand how management modulates the soil microbiome, we surveyed the soil fungal and bacterial communities, as well as soil chemistry and canopy composition in a Nicaraguan coffee cooperative, across 19 individual farms. Using amplicon sequencing, we found that management (organic or conventional), stand age, and previous land use strongly affected the soil microbiome, albeit in different ways. Bacterial communities were most strongly associated with soil chemistry, while fungal communities were more strongly associated with the composition of the canopy and historical land use of the coffee plantation. Notably, both fungal and bacterial richness decreased with stand age. In addition to revealing the first in-depth characterization of the soil microbiome in coffee plantations in Nicaragua, our results highlight how fungal and bacterial communities are simultaneously modulated by long-term land use legacies (i.e., an agricultural plot’s previous land use) and short-term press disturbance (i.e., farm age).One-sentence-summaryThe composition of soil fungal and bacteria communities in shade coffee plantations depend on the combination of the farm’s management type, its previous land use, and the coffee plants’ stand age, but are differently influenced by each.

Contrasting the suitability of shade coffee agriculture and native forest as overwinter habitat for Canada Warbler (Cardellina canadensis) in the Colombian Andes

In the Neotropics, coffee production occurs on a large scale in some of the planet’s most biodiverse regions: tropical mountains. Coffee production systems involving shade trees are considered to have a lower impact on biodiversity than alternative sun coffee. To date, the majority of evidence for the value of shade coffee plantations has not taken into account the relative quality of this habitat compared to the native forests they replaced. We determined the suitability of shade coffee and forest as winter habitat for Canada Warbler (Cardellina canadensis) by comparing variation in the likelihood of capturing individuals, seasonal changes in body condition, and estimates of annual survival between the 2 habitats. We also determined the effect of the strong 2015–2016 El Niño event on survival. Males were relatively more likely to be captured in forest than females and this likelihood increased during drier years. Body condition change over the winter and apparent annual survival were similar for individuals that used forest and coffee. However, condition and survival decreased in both habitats during the El Niño year. Apparent survival was also lower for individuals carrying a radiotag or geolocator. Our findings suggest that shade coffee with high canopy cover and height offers similar benefits to forest in terms of body condition and survival. Landscape conservation approaches, promoting diverse matrices of structurally complex shade coffee and forest might best ensure long-term survival in Neotropical migrants like Canada Warbler.