Recovery of trailside vegetation from trampling in a tropical rain forest

Practically no information exists on the impact of human trampling on tropical rain forest vegetation. We studied three trails with varying periods of use and recovery in a tropical rain forest in Costa Rica. Human impact on trailside plants was curvilinearly related to use, as found by other workers in temperate zone vegetation. Recovery in a period of two years and eight months had been rapid, and herbs and seedlings were more abundant along the recovering trail than in undisturbed forest. The results imply that a shifting mosaic of trails, analogous to the mosaic created by light gaps, may be the best management technique to minimize the impact of human visitors in tropical rain forests.     

Implications of Land Use/Land Cover Change in the Buffer Zone of a National Park in the Tropical Andes

The impacts of land use and land cover (LULC) change in buffer zones surrounding protected ecological reserves have important implications for the management and conservation of these protected areas. This study examines the spatial and temporal patterns of LULC change along the boundary of Rio Abiseo National Park in the Northern Peruvian Andes. Landscape change within four ecological zones was evaluated based on trends expected to occur between 1987 and 2001. Landsat TM and ETM imagery were used to produce LULC classification maps for both years using a hybrid supervised/unsupervised approach. LULC changes were measured using landscape metrics and from-to change maps created by post-classification change detection. Contrary to expectations, tropical upper wet montane forest increased despite being threatened by human-induced fires and cattle grazing of the highland grasslands inside the park. Within the park’s buffer zone, tropical moist forest remnants were fragmented into more numerous and smaller patches between 1987 and 2001; this was in part due to conversion into agricultural land. The methods used in this study provide an effective way to monitor LULC change detection and support the management of protected areas and their surrounding environments.     

Land-Use Systems and Resilience of Tropical Rain Forests in the Tehuantepec Isthmus,Mexico

Land-cover types were analyzed for 1970, 1990 and 2000 as the bases for determining land-use systems and their influence on the resilience of tropical rain forests in the Tehuantepec Isthmus, Mexico. Deforestation (DR) and mean annual transformation rates were calculated from land-cover change data; thus, the classification of land-use change processes was determined according to their impact on resilience: a) Modification, including land-cover conservation and intensification, and b) Conversion, including disturbance and regeneration processes. Regeneration processes, from secondary vegetation under extensive use, cultivated vegetation under intensive use, and cultivated or induced vegetation under extensive use to mature or secondary vegetation, have high resilience capacity. In contrast, cattle-raising is characterized by rapid expansion, long-lasting change, and intense damages; thus, recent disturbance processes, which include the conversion to cattle-raising, provoke the downfall of the traditional agricultural system, and nullify the capacity of resilience of tropical rain forest. The land-use cover change processes reveal a) the existence of four land-use systems (forestry, extensive agriculture, extensive cattle-raising, and intensive uses) and b) a trend towards the replacement of agricultural and forestry systems by extensive cattle-raising, which was consolidated during 1990–2000 (DR of evergreen tropical rain forest=4.6%). Only the forestry system, which is not subject to deforestation, but is affected by factors such as selective timber, extraction, firewood collection, grazing, or human-induced fire, is considered to have high resilience (2 years), compared to agriculture (2–10 years) or cattle-raising (nonresilient). It is concluded that the analysis of land-use systems is essential for understanding the implications of land-use cover dynamics on forest recovery and land degradation in tropical rain forests.     

Computer-aided classification of forest cover types from small scale aerial photography

The US National Park Service must map forest cover types over extensive areas in order to fulfill its goal of maintaining or reconstructing presettlement vegetation within national parks and monuments. Furthermore, such cover type maps must be updated on a regular basis to document vegetation changes. Computer-aided classification of small scale aerial photography is a promising technique for generating forest cover type maps efficiently and inexpensively. In this study, seven cover types were classified with an overall accuracy of 62 percent from a reproduction of a 1120,000 color infrared transparency of a conifer-hardwood forest. The results were encouraging, given the degraded quality of the photograph and the fact that features were not centered, as well as the lack of information on lens vignetting characteristics to make corrections. Suggestions are made for resolving these problems in future research and applications. In addition, it is hypothesized that the overall accuracy is artificially low because the computer-aided classification more accurately portrayed the intermixing of cover types than the hand-drawn maps to which it was compared.     

Comparison of community composition and species diversity of understorey and overstorey tree species in a dry tropical forest of northern India

The study focuses on understorey-overstorey plant community dynamics in a dry tropical forest to facilitate appropriate management decisions. We compare community composition and species diversity of the understorey vegetation among five dry tropical forest sites in northern India. A total of 1500 quadrats distributed over 15 one-ha permanent plots in five sites differing in the degree of disturbance, were used to enumerate the understorey tree species and the results were compared with overstorey tree layer. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS) ordination revealed that human disturbance intensity, as well as the overall disturbance regimes, and soil water holding capacity controlled the organisation of dry tropical forest understorey composition through effects on soil organic matter. The alpha-diversity and its components decreased with increasing human disturbance intensity, reflecting utilisation pressure and decreased soil fertility, as also revealed by the analysis of overstorey tree layer. There was a significant positive relationship between overstorey and understorey diversity. Results suggest that in the future, the existing understorey tree communities may replace the current dry tropical forest communities under prevailing environmental conditions. The study also asserts that the rate of species accumulation will be greater in more disturbed sites as well as at small spatial scale within each disturbance level.     

Jamaica's disappearing forests: physical and human aspects

Jamaica is a small island that is losing its forest cover at a rapid rate. Due to the dependency of its largely poor population on the many services and functions its forests provide, this loss threatens to have substantial socioeconomic and ecological consequences for the country. Despite these basic facts, the problem of Jamaican deforestation has received very little attention from the scientific community. This article presents results of an island-wide, satellite-based study of forest change for Jamaica for the period 1987–1992, which was supplemented by a field trip to the island in 1999 to assess the overall accuracy of the estimate. Landsat MSS images, which are available only up until 1992, have proved to be an invaluable and cost-effective resource for mapping forest change in the tropics, particularly in large areas. A supervised classification indicates that Jamaica experienced an average annual deforestation rate of 3.9% for this period, a figure higher than existing estimates based on partial ground surveys but lower than the FAO's 1990 Tropical Forest Assessment of 5.3% for 1981–1990. Deforestation estimates for Jamaica's 14 parishes are also presented, based on the integration of satellite-derived forest classification maps with a parish administrative boundaries map of the island in a GIS. A correlation analysis between parish deforestation estimates and socioeconomic and land use/quality indicators derived from official sources suggests that deforestation is occurring most rapidly in highly populated areas possessing large numbers of small farmers who live and work under resource-poor conditions. By providing a sense of the magnitude of and main forest loss hotspots, it is hoped that these national and subnational level forest estimates will draw scientific attention to the problem of deforestation on the island. In addition, the socioeconomic analysis may provide policy-makers and planners with some sense of the relative contribution of underlying driving process in this deforestation as a first step toward the creation of effective social programs to combat the problem.     

Mapping Grazing-Induced Degradation in a Semi-Arid Environment: A Rapid and Cost Effective Approach for Assessment and Monitoring

Improved techniques for measuring and monitoring the state of biodiversity are required for reporting on national obligations to international and regional conservation institutions. Measuring the extent of grazing-related degradation in semi-arid ecosystems has proved difficult. Here we present an accurate and cost-effective method for doing this, and apply it in a South African semi-arid region that forms part of a globally significant biodiversity hotspot. We grouped structurally and functionally similar vegetation units, which were expert-mapped at the 1:50,000 scale, into four habitat types, and developed habitat-specific degradation models. We quantified degradation into three categories, using differences between dry and wet season values of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for the three succulent karoo habitats, and the difference between maximum and mean NDVI values for the subtropical thicket habitat. Field evaluation revealed an accuracy of 86%. Overall, degradation was high: 24% of the study area was modeled as severely degraded, and only 9% as intact. Levels of degradation were highest for bottomland habitats that were most exposed to grazing impacts. In sharp contrast to our methods, a widely used, broad-scale and snapshot assessment of land cover in South Africa was only 33% accurate, and it considerably underestimated the extent of severely degraded habitat in the study area. While our approach requires a multidisciplinary team, and in particular expert knowledge on the characteristics and spatial delimitation of vegetation types, it is repeatable, rapid, and relatively inexpensive. Consequently, it holds great promise for monitoring and evaluation programs in semi-arid ecosystems, in Africa, and beyond.     

Carbon dynamics and land-use choices: building a regional-scale multidisciplinary model

Policy enabling tropical forests to approach their potential contribution to global-climate-change mitigation requires forecasts of land use and carbon storage on a large scale over long periods. In this paper, we present an integrated modeling methodology that addresses these needs. We model the dynamics of the human land-use system and of C pools contained in each ecosystem, as well as their interactions. The model is national scale, and is currently applied in a preliminary way to Costa Rica using data spanning a period of over 50 years. It combines an ecological process model, parameterized using field and other data, with an economic model, estimated using historical data to ensure a close link to actual behavior. These two models are linked so that ecological conditions affect land-use choices and vice versa. The integrated model predicts land use and its consequences for C storage for policy scenarios. These predictions can be used to create baselines, reward sequestration, and estimate the value in both environmental and economic terms of including C sequestration in tropical forests as part of the efforts to mitigate global climate change. The model can also be used to assess the benefits from costly activities to increase accuracy and thus reduce errors and their societal costs.     

Understanding large-scale deforestation in southern Jinotega, Nicaragua from 1978 to 1999 through the examination of changes in land use and land cover

Nicaragua, home to the largest remaining extent of rainforest in Central America (total surface area) and to a significant indigenous population, has lost approximately half of its forest cover since 1950. This major and rapid loss of forest cover has been explained as the consequence of an eastward moving agricultural frontier that cuts through the region of Jinotega. If the current deforestation rate continues, the country could lose its remaining forest cover over the course of the next two decades; therefore, it is essential that the dynamics and relationships of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) in this region are understood. To examine LUCC in Nicaragua over time, Landsat imagery from the southern portion of the region of Jinotega, taken in 1978, 1987, and 1999 was utilized. A remote-sensing method, supervised classification, which allows for the grouping of spectrally similar values for each year, followed by an image change detection analysis (postclassification comparison) was conducted. Groundtruthing (field validation) was conducted in 2006 to validate the data, which yielded increasing overall accuracy rates of 71.68% for 1978, 82.35% for 1987, and 84.38% for 1999. The classification and change detection results showed that if the agricultural cultivation overtook this region, it happened before 1978. Therefore, the possibility that either deforestation did not actually occur along an agricultural frontier or that it was located further east exists; this would be an interesting subject for future studies. There was, however, clear evidence of increased forest cover from 1987 to 1999 near the urban center, correlating with the enforced reforestation law in the city of Jinotega.     

四川盆地森林覆盖率自然影响因素分析

本文对四川盆地森林覆盖率的影响因素进行逐步回归分析,结果表明影响森林覆盖率的自然因素是综合的,它包括气候、地貌、土壤等自然条件。其中以7月降水量、地形崎岖度、山地比例、酸性紫色土比例及土地垦殖系数等作为决定四川森林覆盖率变化的最重要因素,这5个因素即可解释盆地森林覆盖率80%以上的变化。     

FOREST GROWTH IMPACT ON PEAK SNOW PACK MEASUREMENTS AT LONG TERM SNOW COURSES1

ABSTRACT: Snow course surveys in late winter provide stream‐flow forecasters with their best information for making water supply and flood forecasts for the subsequent spring and summer runoff period in mountainous regions of western North America. Snow survey data analyses are generally based on a 30‐year “normal” period. It is well documented that forest cover changes over time will affect snow accumulation on the ground within forests. This paper seeks to determine if forest cover changes over decades at long term snow courses decrease measured peak snow water equivalent (SWE) enough to affect runoff prediction. Annual peak SWE records were analyzed at four snow courses in two different forest types having at least 25 years of snowpack data to detect any decreases in SWE due to forest growth. No statistically significant decreases in annual peak SWE over time were found at any of these four snow courses. The wide range of annual winter precipitation and correspondingly highly variable peak snowpack accumulation, as well as many other weather and site variables, masked any minor trends in the data.     

Composition, species diversity, and biomass of the herbaceous community in dry tropical forest of northern India in relation to soil moisture and light intensity

Herb layer contributes substantially to the species diversity of forests and responds relatively quickly to changes in the environment. The objectives of the present study were to understand the relationships among tree canopy cover, soil moisture, light intensity, herbaceous diversity and biomass in a dry tropical forest of India. For this, 20 locations equally distributed in four sites were selected. Four quadrats, each 1?×?1?m in size, were randomly placed for sampling at each location. For each quadrat, tree canopy cover, incident light, soil moisture, herbaceous diversity, and biomass were determined. Results indicated that the selected locations differed in terms of tree canopy cover, soil moisture, light intensity, herbaceous diversity, and biomass. Principal component analysis (PCA), using importance value indices of the component species yielded four groups corresponding to the four communities. PCA axes were related to the tree canopy cover, light intensity, and soil moisture and suggested that these variables had a profound effect on the organization and determination of herbaceous floristic composition and diversity. Positive relationships of tree canopy cover with soil moisture, herbaceous diversity and biomass, and those of soil moisture with herbaceous diversity and biomass suggested that the tree canopies facilitated the herbaceous communities by modifying environmental conditions that ultimately improved the diversity and production. Further, the study showed a linear relationship of herbaceous diversity with biomass, indicating the importance of species diversity for generating primary production in forest herbs.     

Landscape Character and Fish Assemblage Structure and Function in Western Lake Superior Streams: General Relationships and Identification of Thresholds

As part of a comparative watershed project investigating land-cover/land-use disturbance gradients for streams in the western Lake Superior Basin, we examined general relationships between landscape character and fish assemblage structure and function. We also examined the shape of those relationships to identify discontinuity thresholds where small changes in landscape character were associated with marked shifts in the fish assemblages. After completing a geographic analysis of second- and third-order watersheds in the western Lake Superior drainage, we randomly selected 48 streams along mature forest and watershed storage gradients in 2 hydrogeomorphic regions as our study sites. During the summers of 1997 and 1998, we used electrofishing to sample fish assemblages from each stream. Each of the landscape factors was significantly associated with fish assemblage structure and function based on analysis of covariance. Watershed storage was related to the greatest number of fish assemblage characteristics, but hydrogeopmorphic region and mature forest cover were strongly associated as well. The hydrogeomorphic region also mediated relationships between watershed character and fish assemblages. Discontinuity thresholds for our fish assemblages averaged 11% for watershed storage and 50% for watershed mature forest cover based on piecewise regression analysis. Although many of the landscape–fish relationships might have been manifest through effects on in-stream habitat, our results highlight the importance of management and land-use planning decisions at the watershed and landscape scales.Published online     

Assessing and managing the sociocultural impacts of ecotourism: revisiting the Santa Elena rainforest project

Summary This paper outlines the second phase of an ecotourism project undertaken in the Santa Elena community, in the Monteverde region of Costa Rica. The community originally established a rainforest reserve with the help of Youth Challenge International in an attempt to provide a wider economic base and employment for the area. The project has been successful in the first phase in that it is now drawing an annual income of US$40 000 and it employs guides and management from the local community. In terms of the underlying principles usually aligned with ecotourism it has been successful but it is now necessary to evaluate the impacts this project is having on the community. The second phase of the project was to assess the sociocultural impacts of ecotourism on that community and the paper outlines this phase.Stephen Wearing is a lecturer in the School of Leisure and Tourism Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. He lectures and consults in the area of tourism and environmental planning, and parks and protected area management. His particular interest is in ecotourism projects with local communities and he has spent much of the last 4 years working on the Santa Elena Project. He is linked with Youth Challenge International and people interested in becoming involved or looking for assistance with community projects of this nature can contact him at the above address. Libby Larson recently graduated with a BA in Leisure Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, focusing on social sciences in natural resource management. She has also worked in Costa Rica with Youth Challenge International and is particularly interested in ecotourism.     

Forest Protection and Reforestation in Costa Rica: Evaluation of a Clean Development Mechanism Prototype

/ Costa Rica has recently established a program that provides funds for reforestation and forest protection on private lands, partly through the sale of carbon certificates to industrialized countries. Countries purchasing these carbon offsets hope one day to receive credit against their own commitments to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. Costa Rica has used the proceeds of the sale of carbon offsets to Norway to help finance this forest incentive program, called the Private Forestry Project, which pays thousands of participants to reforest or protect forest on their lands. The Private Forestry Project is accompanied by a monitoring program conducted by Costa Rican forest engineers that seeks to determine net carbon storage accomplished on these lands each year. The Private Forestry Project, which is officially registered as an Activity Implemented Jointly, is a possible model for bundled projects funded by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It also serves as an interesting example for the CDM because it was designed by a developing country host-not by an industrialized country investor. Accordingly, it reflects the particular "sustainable development" objectives of the host country or at least the host planners. Early experience in implementing the Private Forestry Project is evaluated in light of the main objectives of the CDM and its precursor-Activities Implemented Jointly. It is concluded that the project appears to meet the criteria of global cost-effectiveness and financing from non-ODA sources. The sustainable development implications of the project are specific to the region and would not necessarily match the ideals of all investing and developing countries. The project may be seen to achieve additional greenhouse gas abatement when compared against some (although not all) baselines.     

Home Range Size and Choice of Management Strategy for Lynx in Scandinavia

Annual and seasonal home ranges were calculated for 47 Eurasian lynx in four Scandinavian study sites (two in Sweden and two in Norway). The observed home ranges were the largest reported for the species, with study site averages ranging from 600 to 1400 km² for resident males and from 300 to 800 km² for resident females. When home range sizes were compared to the size of protected areas (national parks and nature reserves) in Scandinavia, it was concluded that very few protected areas contained sufficient forest to provide space for more than a few individuals. As a direct consequence of this, most lynx need to be conserved in the multiuse seminatural forest habitats that cover large areas in Scandinavia. This conservation strategy leads to a number of conflicts with some land uses (sheep and semidomestic reindeer herding, and roe deer hunters), but not all (forestry and moose harvest). Accordingly research must be aimed at understanding the ecology of these conflicts, and finding solutions.     

An Assessment of Forest Cover Trends in South and North Korea, From 1980 to 2010

It is generally believed that forest cover in North Korea has undergone a substantial decrease since 1980, while in South Korea, forest cover has remained relatively static during that same period of time. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forest Resources Assessments—based on the reported forest inventories from North and South Korea—suggest a major forest cover decrease in North Korea, but only a slight decrease in South Korea during the last 30 years. In this study, we seek to check and validate those assessments by comparing them to independently derived forest cover maps compiled for three time intervals between 1990 and 2010, as well as to provide a spatially explicit view of forest cover change in the Korean Peninsula since the 1990s. We extracted tree cover data for the Korean Peninsula from existing global datasets derived from satellite imagery. Our estimates, while qualitatively supporting the FAO results, show that North Korea has lost a large number of densely forested areas, and thus in this sense has suffered heavier forest loss than the FAO assessment suggests. Given the limited time interval studied in our assessment, the overall forest loss from North Korea during the whole span of time since 1980 may have been even heavier than in our estimate. For South Korea, our results indicate that the forest cover has remained relatively stable at the national level, but that important variability in forest cover evolution exists at the regional level: While the northern and western provinces show an overall decrease in forested areas, large areas in the southeastern part of the country have increased their forest cover.     

Brazil's National Atlantic Forest Policy: A Challenge for State-level Environmental Planning. The Case of Santa Catarina,Brazil

Formulating effective national forest policy in lesser developed countries is complex and needs to take into account the social as well as the biophysical dimensions which impact on forest resources. Deforestation continues to be a serious concern in many of these countries and most national forest policy seeks to curb the devastationof forest resources. Due to different social groups competing for use of the forest resources, however, designing effective policy is challenging. The needs of these different social groups must be considered.Unless this is done, the forest policy itself can be an impetus for deforestation.In the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, deforestation in the Atlantic forest (Mata Atlantica) is occurring at a rapid rate, threatening the richness of biodiversity. There are a number of causes for deforestation in Santa Catarina, one being Brazil's national Atlantic forest policy. Unintentionally, the structure of this conservation-focusedpolicy has declared all of Santa Catarina's native forests off-limits to any type of exploitation, the only state in Brazil where this has occurred, and has actually precipitated deforestation. Challenges for state-level planning include addressing the national forest policy as well as the state-levelimpacts resulting from the policy. The history of the policy, the social groups affected and challenges for planning are discussed, as are proposed solutions.     

Tropical deciduous forests and the adivasi. Indigenous traditions as response to leaf fall in Bastar, India

This article draws attention to the crucial link between the tropical deciduous forest ecosystem and the lifestyle of the adivasi (indigenous) people. Taking the case of Bastar District in Chhattisgarh, Central India, an analysis is made of the various commonly used wild plants, their deciduous habit, and the adivasi calendar that regulates the peoples’ use of these plants. By examining the specific seasonal patterns of leaf fall of plants and the dates set for the commencement of their use, the article shows that there is an implicit relation between adivasi festivals and the deciduous character of Bastar's forests.     

Landscape Changes in the Mullica River Basin of the Pinelands National Reserve,New Jersey,USA

In 1979, the Pinelands Commission was established as a regional land-use planning and regulatory agency charged with the implementation of a Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) for the Pinelands National Reserve (New Jersey, USA). The CMP was created to balance land preservation and development interests in the Reserve. Because water-quality degradation from developed and agricultural landscapes is associated with changes in the composition of biological communities, monitoring landscape changes provides one of the most direct measures of the impact of land-use policies on the Pinelands ecosystem. In this study, we prepared detailed, land-cover maps within randomly selected aerial-photograph plots for a major watershed in the Reserve. We used these land-cover maps to quantify changes in landscape composition and structure (i.e., patch size, patch area, and number of patches) and characterize land-cover transitions in the basin between 1979 and 1991. Because the study period represented the first 12 years of the regional-planning effort in the Reserve, we evaluated the relationship between land-cover transitions and Commission management-area designations which permit different land-use intensities. Although the landscape composition was similar in 1979 and 1991, we found an increase in the total area and number of developed-land, managed-grassland, and barren-land patches. An increase in the number of patches and a decrease in the total area and median and third-quartile patch sizes for forest land and for all patches regardless of cover type indicated that fragmentation of forest land and the landscape as a whole occurred during the study period. The major land-cover transitions that occurred during the period were the loss of forest land to development and associated cover types and the conversion of one agricultural type to another. Overall, land-cover transitions during the period were found to be consistent with the Commission management-area designations, which indicated that the regional-planning effort has been successful in directing human activities to appropriate areas of the basin.