Infrastructure expansion and the Indonesian Borneo tropical forests

Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) houses ~41 million hectares of tropical forest with global environmental significance. Currently, numerous infrastructure expansion projects are occurring in the region aiming to boost economic growth. We spatially analyzed the potential impacts of this infrastructure expansion on tropical forests and agro-economic development in the region. We found that many routes will entail numerous detrimental ecological impacts, including limiting faunal movement, reducing habitat connectivity, creating isolated forest patches, fragmenting current intact forests, substantially increasing forest edge effects, and reducing core forests habitat area. Furthermore, several routes will dissect a number of current protected areas, potentially undermining Indonesian efforts to achieve the Aichi target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) i.e. 17% terrestrial protected area connectivity by 2020. These infrastructure expansions are likely to facilitate the further development of extractive industries, namely, mining, logging, and oil palm estate agriculture but they are highly unlikely to generate the envisioned agro-economic development. Our study suggests that the current increasing trend of infrastructure expansion- ignoring the environmental values at the core of the approach- sharply increases the likelihood of serious ecosystem decay in the tropical forests of Indonesian Borneo

Development corridors and remnant-forest conservation in Sumatra, Indonesia

Road-infrastructure development in Southeast Asia is opening new resource frontiers but also consolidating earlier investments in agriculture and trade, as illustrated by the 2,700-km Trans-Sumatra Highway planned for Sumatra, Indonesia. In contrast to earlier broadscale forest losses in Sumatra, driven historically in Sumatra infrastructure and agricultural expansion, the Trans-Sumatra Highway would largely affect remnant forests. We identify Kerinci Seblat National Park and its surrounds, the Leuser Ecosystem, and the Batang Toru area as three remnant-forest areas critical to Sumatra's ecological integrity and facing conservation challenges that would be significantly aggravated by the Trans-Sumatra Highway. If completed as planned, the highway will promote human incursions into the fringes of these areas. New Indonesian regulations concerning road developments in forests are unlikely to prevent such outcomes. The regulations afford weaker protections to ungazetted and noncore protected forests, which typify remnant-forest areas threatened by infrastructure expansion and are often critical for species conservation. We urge that ungazetted protected forests be given equal priority to gazetted protected forests in regard to conservation planning for road development, and also that gazetted forests be expanded in the Leuser Ecosystem and Batang Toru area to hedge against further incursions. Without such provisions, recent legal challenges to road developments in Sumatra's remnant forests have often been unsuccessful. The Trans-Sumatra Highway may conceivably promote an effective legal alliance between conservationists and agricultural communities threatened with land expropriation, given that nearly half of the highway's route remains pending contentious land-acquisition processes

Circuit Theory

Contains research objectives and reports on two research projects.U.S. Air Force under Air Force Contract AF19(604)-5200Lincoln Laboratory, Purchase Order DDL-B22

Emerging challenges for sustainable development and forest conservation in Sarawak, Borneo

The forests of Borneo—the third largest island on the planet—sustain some of the highest biodiversity and carbon storage in the world. The forests also provide vital ecosystem services and livelihood support for millions of people in the region, including many indigenous communities. The Pan-Borneo Highway and several hydroelectric dams are planned or already under construction in Sarawak, a Malaysian state comprising part of the Borneo. This development seeks to enhance economic growth and regional connectivity, support community access to services, and promote industrial development. However, the implications of the development of highway and dams for forest integrity, biodiversity and ecosystem services remained largely unreported. We assessed these development projects using fine-scale biophysical and environmental data and found several environmental and socioeconomic risks associated with the projects. The highway and hydroelectric dam projects will impact 32 protected areas including numerous key habitats of threatened species such as the proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus), Sarawak surili (Presbytis chrysomelas), Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and tufted ground squirrel (Rheithrosciurus macrotis). Under its slated development trajectory, the local and trans-national forest connectivity between Malaysian Borneo and Indonesian Borneo would also be substantially diminished. Nearly ~161 km of the Pan-Borneo Highway in Sarawak will traverse forested landscapes and ~55 km will traverse carbon-rich peatlands. The 13 hydroelectric dam projects will collectively impact ~1.7 million ha of forest in Sarawak. The consequences of planned highway and hydroelectric dams construction will increase the carbon footprint of development in the region. Moreover, many new road segments and hydroelectric dams would be built on steep slopes in high-rainfall zones and forested areas, increasing both construction and ongoing maintenance costs. The projects would also alter livelihood activities of downstream communities, risking their long-term sustainability. Overall, our findings identify major economic, social and environmental risks for several planned road segments in Sarawak—such as those between Telok Melano and Kuching; Sibu and Bintulu; and in the Lambir, Limbang and Lawas regions—and dam projects—such as Tutoh, Limbang, Lawas, Baram, Linau, Ulu Air and Baleh dams. Such projects need to be reviewed to ensure they reflect Borneo’s unique environmental and forest ecosystem values, the aspirations of local communities and long-term sustainability of the projects rather than being assessed solely on their short term economic returns

High-risk infrastructure projects pose imminent threats to forests in Indonesian Borneo

Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) sustains ~37 million hectares of native tropical forest. Numerous large-scale infrastructure projects aimed at promoting land-development activities are planned or ongoing in the region. However, little is known of the potential impacts of this new infrastructure on Bornean forests or biodiversity. We found that planned and ongoing road and rail-line developments will have many detrimental ecological impacts, including fragmenting large expanses of intact forest. Assuming conservatively that new road and rail projects will influence only a 1 km buffer on either side, landscape connectivity across the region will decline sharply (from 89% to 55%) if all imminently planned projects proceed. This will have particularly large impacts on wide-ranging, rare species such as rhinoceros, orangutans, and elephants. Planned developments will impact 42 protected areas, undermining Indonesian efforts to achieve key targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity. New infrastructure will accelerate expansion in intact or frontier regions of legal and illegal logging and land colonization as well as illicit mining and wildlife poaching. The net environmental, social, financial, and economic risks of several imminent projects—such as parallel border roads in West, East, and North Kalimantan, new Trans-Kalimantan road developments in Central Kalimantan and North Kalimantan, and freeways and rail lines in East Kalimantan—could markedly outstrip their overall benefits. Such projects should be reconsidered in light of rigorous cost-benefit frameworks

'A beginning and not the end’: Work after a diagnosis of dementia

YesWhile there is a growing literature on the experiences of disabled workers, this article presents an account of a work experience not frequently documented: being employed while living with dementia. It does this through the account of Elizabeth Draper, an NHS Hospital Trust manager, who received a diagnosis of dementia while employed. The article offers new ways of conceptualizing the struggles of disabled workers to continue with their project of self-becoming through work. It shows how work practices can enact violence through ‘non-recognition’ and how workers can subvert this violence to create opportunities for future development

Climate Change Affects Reproductive Phenology in Lianas of Australia’s Wet Tropics

Lianas are increasing in abundance in many tropical forests. This increase can alter forest structure and decrease both carbon storage and tree diversity via antagonistic relationships between lianas and their host trees. Climate change is postulated as an underlying driver of increasing liana abundances, via increases in dry-season length, forest-disturbance events, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations; all factors thought to favour lianas. However, the impact of climate change on liana reproductive phenology, an underlying determinant of liana abundance, has been little studied, particularly outside of Neotropical forests. Over a 15-year period (2000–2014), we examined the phenological patterns of a liana community in intact rainforests of the Wet Tropics bioregion of Australia; a World Heritage Area and hotspot of floral diversity. Specifically, we assessed (1) flowering and fruiting patterns of liana species; (2) potential climate drivers of flowering and fruiting activity; and (3) the influence of El Niño-related climatic disturbances on liana phenology. We found that flowering and fruiting of the studied liana species increased over time. Liana reproduction, moreover, rose in apparent response to higher temperatures and reduced rainfall. Finally, we found flowering and fruiting of the liana species increased following El Niño events. These results suggest that liana reproduction and abundance are likely to increase under predicted future climate regimes, with potentially important impacts on the survival, growth, and reproduction of resident trees and thus the overall health of Australian tropical rainforests

The Safety INdEx of prehospital on scene triage (SINEPOST) study: the development and validation of a risk prediction model to support ambulance clinical transport decisions on-scene

One of the main problems currently facing the delivery of safe and effective emergency care is excess demand, which causes congestion at different time points in a patient’s journey. The modern case-mix of prehospital patients is broad and complex, diverging from the traditional ‘time critical accident and emergency’ patients. It now includes many low-acuity patients and those with social care and mental health needs. In the ambulance service, transport decisions are the hardest to make and paramedics decide to take more patients to the ED than would have a clinical benefit. As such, this study asked the following research questions: In adult patients attending the ED by ambulance, can prehospital information predict an avoidable attendance? What is the simulated transportability of the model derived from the primary outcome? A linked dataset of 101,522 ambulance service and ED ambulance incidents linked to their respective ED care record from the whole of Yorkshire between 1st July 2019 and 29th February 2020 was used as the sample for this study. A machine learning method known as XGBoost was applied to the data in a novel way called Internal-External Cross Validation (IECV) to build the model. The results showed great discrimination with a C-statistic of 0.81 (95%CI 0.79–0.83) and excellent calibration with an O:E ratio was 0.995 (95% CI 0.97–1.03), with the most important variables being a patient’s mobility, their physiological observations and clinical impression with psychiatric problems, allergic reactions, cardiac chest pain, head injury, non-traumatic back pain, and minor cuts and bruising being the most important. This study has successfully developed a decision-support model that can be transformed into a tool that could help paramedics make better transport decisions on scene, known as the SINEPOST model. It is accurate, and spatially validated across multiple geographies including rural, urban, and coastal. It is a fair algorithm that does not discriminate new patients based on their age, gender, ethnicity, or decile of deprivation. It can be embedded into an electronic Patient Care Record system and automatically calculate the probability that a patient will have an avoidable attendance at the ED, if they were transported. This manuscript complies with the Transparent Reporting of a multivariable prediction model for Individual Prognosis Or Diagnosis (TRIPOD) statement (Moons KGM, 2015)

Effects of oil palm and human presence on activity patterns of terrestrial mammals in the Colombian Llanos

The ability of animals to adjust their behaviour can influence how they respond to environmental changes and human presence. We quantified activity patterns of terrestrial mammals in oil palm plantations and native riparian forest in Colombia to determine if species exhibited behavioural changes depending on the type of habitat and the presence of humans. Despite the large sampling effort (12,403 camera-days), we were only able to examine the activity patterns of ten species in riparian forests and seven species in oil palm plantations, with four species (capybara, giant anteater, lesser anteater and common opossum) being represented by enough records (i.e. n > 20) in both oil palm and forest to allow robust comparisons. Only capybaras showed an apparent change in activity patterns between oil palm plantations and riparian forests, shifting from being crepuscular in forest to predominantly nocturnal inside oil palm plantations. Further, capybaras, giant anteaters and white-tailed deer appeared to modify their activities to avoid human presence inside oil palm plantations by increasing nocturnality (temporal overlap Δ ^ ranged from 0.13 to 0.36), whereas jaguarundi had high overlap with human activities [Δ ^ =0.85 (0.61–0.90)]. Species pair-wise analysis within oil palm revealed evidence for temporal segregation between species occupying the same trophic position (e.g. foxes and jaguarundi), whereas some predators and their prey (e.g. ocelots and armadillos) had high overlaps in temporal activity patterns as might be expected. Our findings shed light on the potential behavioural adaptation of mammals to anthropogenic landscapes, a feature not captured in traditional studies that focus on measures such as species richness or abundance