Balancing fuelwood and biodiversity concerns in rural Nepal

An agent-based model is developed to explore the pattern of fuelwood collection in an 1178 ha forest area in rural mountainous Nepal. The model relates fuelwood collection intensity and amount of dead wood available for collection to the diversity of polypore species, a group of strictly dead wood dependent fungi which can be used as indicators of the biodiversity associated with dead wood. By analysing scenarios of increased collection the model shows that the relative impact on polypore diversity is rising more rapidly than the time used for collection. This indicates that better market access in the future could potentially imply a major threat to biodiversity associated with dead wood.