The impact of FSC certification on timber tree regeneration and floristic composition in Honduran community forests

Forest certification has been put forward as a means to improve the sustainability of forest management in the tropical countries, where traditional environmental regulation has been inefficient in controlling forest degradation and deforestation. In these countries, the role of communities as managers of the forest resources is rapidly increasing. However, only a fraction of tropical community forests have been certified and little is known about the impacts of certification in these systems. Two areas in Honduras where community-managed forest operations had received FSC certifications were studied. Río Cangrejal represents an area with a longer history of use, whereas Copén is a more recent forest operation. Ecological sustainability was assessed through comparing timber tree regeneration and floristic composition between certified, conventionally managed and natural forests. Data on woody vegetation and environmental conditions was collected within logging gaps and natural treefall gaps. The regeneration success of shade-tolerant timber tree species was lower in certified than in conventionally managed forests in Río Cangrejal. Furthermore, the floristic composition was more natural-like in the conventionally managed than the certified forests. However, the environmental conditions indicated reduced logging disturbance in the certified forests. Data from Copén demonstrated that the regeneration success of light-demanding timber species was higher in the certified than the unlogged forests. In spite of this, the most valuable timber species Swietenia macrophylla was not regenerating successfully in the certified forests, due to rapid gap closure. The results indicate that pre-certification loggings and forest fragmentation may have a stronger impact on forest regeneration than current, certified management practices. The focus in community forests under low-intensive logging should be directed toward landscape connectivity and the restoration of degraded timber species, instead of reducing mechanical logging damage. Such actions are dependent on better recognition of resource rights, and improving the status of small Southern producers in the markets of certified wood products.Metsäsertifiointia on pidetty lupaavana keinona hillitä metsien tuhoutumista tropiikissa. Paikallisilla yhteisöillä on omistus- tai käyttöoikeus yhä suurempaan osaan tropiikin metsiä, mutta näistä yhteisömetsistä on toistaiseksi sertifioitu vain murto-osa. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin FSC-metsäsertifioinnin vaikutuksia hakkuiden ekologiseen kestävyyteen Hondurasin yhteisömetsissä. Ekologista kestävyyttä arvioitiin arvopuiden uusiutumismenestyksen ja lajiston luonnontilaisuuden kautta. Kasvillisuus- ja ympäristöoloja mitattiin sertifioitujen, perinteisellä tavalla hoidettujen ja luonnonmetsien puunkaatuma-aukoissa. Oletusten vastaisesti varjoa sietävien arvopuulajien uusiutumismenestys oli heikompaa sertifioiduissa kuin perinteisellä tavalla hoidetuissa metsissä. Perinteisesti hoidettujen metsien hakkuuaukkojen lajisto oli myös enemmän luonnontilaisen lajiston kaltaista, mikä viittaa siihen, että sertifioinnilla ei ole onnistuttu parantamaan hakkuiden kestävyyttä. Ympäristömuuttujien tarkastelu kuitenkin osoitti, että hakkuuhäiriötä oli vähemmän sertifioiduissa metsissä. Valoa vaativat arvopuulajit uusiutuivat oletusten mukaisesti paremmin sertifioiduissa kuin hakkaamattomissa metsissä. Pienissä hakkuuaukoissa ei kuitenkaan välttämättä ole tarpeeksi valoa arvokkaimman puulajin, mahongin (Swietenia macrophylla) uusiutumiselle. Tulosten perusteella metsien aiempi kestämätön käyttö ja pirstaloituneisuus saattavat vaikuttaa metsän uusiutumiseen enemmän kuin vähäintensiiviset sertifioidut hakkuut. Metsikkötason mekaanisen hakkuuhäiriön vähentämisen sijaan yhteisömetsien sertifioinneissa tulisi kiinnittää enemmän huomiota maisematason yhteyksiin metsien välillä ja loppuun hakattujen puulajien palauttamiseen. Tällaisten toimenpiteiden toteuttaminen on sidoksissa metsistä saatavaan toimeentuloon ja metsien omistusoikeuksiin. Kestävyyden parantaminen onnistuu vain, jos yhteisömetsätuottajien asemaa ja kilpailukykyä sertifioitujen tuotteiden markkinoilla pystytään parantamaan

The challenges of certifying tropical community forests: A case study from Honduras

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Linking scales and disciplines : an interdisciplinary cross-scale approach to supporting climate-relevant ecosystem management

CITATION: Berger, C. et al. 2019. Linking scales and disciplines : an interdisciplinary cross-scale approach to supporting climate-relevant ecosystem management. Climatic Change, 156:139–150, doi:10.1007/s10584-019-02544-0.The original publication is available at https://www.springer.com/journal/10584Southern Africa is particularly sensitive to climate change, due to both ecological and socioeconomic factors, with rural land users among the most vulnerable groups. The provision of information to support climate-relevant decision-making requires an understanding of the projected impacts of change and complex feedbacks within the local ecosystems, as well as local demands on ecosystem services. In this paper, we address the limitation of current approaches for developing management relevant socio-ecological information on the projected impacts of climate change and human activities.We emphasise the need for linking disciplines and approaches by expounding the methodology followed in our two consecutive projects. These projects combine disciplines and levels of measurements from the leaf level (ecophysiology) to the local landscape level (flux measurements) and from the local household level (socio-economic surveys) to the regional level (remote sensing), feeding into a variety of models at multiple scales. Interdisciplinary, multi-scaled, and integrated socio-ecological approaches, as proposed here, are needed to compliment reductionist and linear, scalespecific approaches. Decision support systems are used to integrate and communicate the data and models to the local decision-makers.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02544-0Publisher's versio

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Integrating project-based infrastructures with long-term greenhouse gas observations in Africa

There is a lack of long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement infrastructures in Africa. This limits our understanding of the temporal dynamics of the biosphere-atmosphere exchange of carbon in response to climate change. Where relevant infrastructures have been established in externally funded research projects, they have often not been successfully transferred to local institutions at project termination, nor maintained in the long term. This leads to loss of capacity and continuity in primary data. We describe a collaborative approach where eddy-covariance (EC) towers for continuous long-term observation of carbon dioxide and energy fluxes were constructed under two consecutive German-funded research projects and designed to complement existing South African infrastructures. They will be transferred to partner institutions at project termination, supported by deliberate capacity building actions for long term sustainability. Joint activities were implemented to i) strengthen technical expertise for infrastructure maintenance, ii) introduce new generation of academic scientists to the topic, iii) co-develop a training concept to enhance local capacity to continue teaching the topic, iv) improve the uptake and use of data by the research community, v) improve data use and access by stakeholders, and vi) facilitate knowledge exchange between institutions. Co-designed activities included training, apprenticeships and knowledge exchange, student exchange, co-supervision, and public outreach. Following a similar model in international research projects could significantly benefit 1) national capacity for emission inventories, 2) development of long-term GHG observation networks, and 3) the global scientific community via improved availability of data. While we specifically focus on a network of GHG observations, the principles are applicable for the infrastructure to observe other surface/atmosphere exchange processes or other long term observational infrastructure