Stocks and productivity of dead wood in mangrove forests: A systematic literature review

The functional and ecological importance of dead wood in terrestrial forests is widely recognized and researched. In contrast, much less is known about dead wood in mangrove forests, despite its known or demonstrated contribution to key ecological processes including nutrient cycling and seedling recruitment. In addition, mangrove dead wood provides an important service for millions of people; harvesting wood for fuel is widespread in mangroves and is often vital for the lives and well-being of people living close to these forests. Limited information on stocks and production, and the drivers of these, means that understanding and managing the supply of this service is difficult. Here we conduct a systematic review of the literature on dead wood stocks and production in mangrove ecosystems. 475 subject articles were found, with large gaps in geography, species, and forest type. After excluding records that were not relevant to our study and those from mass mortality events, 68 studies remained. We also added new data from 9 sites in Kenya, to provide overall estimates of mean (± SD) stocks of dead wood of 16.85 ± 25.35 Mg ha-1 standing and 29.92 ± 36.72 Mg ha-1 downed. Our analysis shows that potentially, higher stocks of dead wood might be found in forests without evidence of human impact. Average mean production with 95% CI was 6.30, 3.10 – 11.40 Mg ha-1yr-1. Estimates of daily wood use were applied to give likely demands on wood from mangrove dependent communities. This review reveals the paucity of research on mangrove dead wood, hence these estimates of average stocks and productivity remain very limited and thus, further work on the dynamics of dead wood in mangroves and the ecological effects of its removal is needed

Nature’s contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs

Millions of households globally rely on uncultivated ecosystems for their livelihoods. However, much of the understanding about the broader contribution of uncultivated ecosystems to human wellbeing is still based on a series of small-scale studies due to limited availability of large-scale datasets. We pooled together 11 comparable datasets comprising 232 settlements and 10,971 households in ten low-and middle-income countries, representing forest, savanna and coastal ecosystems to analyse how uncultivated nature contributes to multi-dimensional wellbeing and how benefits from nature are distributed between households. The resulting dataset integrates secondary data on rural livelihoods, multidimensional human wellbeing, household demographics, resource tenure and social-ecological context, primarily drawing on nine existing household survey datasets and their associated contextual information together with selected variables, such as travel time to cities, population density, local area GDP and land use and land cover from existing global datasets. This integrated dataset has been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service) and will be useful for further analyses on nature-wellbeing relationships on its own or in combination with similar datasets

Nature’s contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs

Millions of households globally rely on uncultivated ecosystems for their livelihoods. However, much of the understanding about the broader contribution of uncultivated ecosystems to human wellbeing is still based on a series of small-scale studies due to limited availability of large-scale datasets. We pooled together 11 comparable datasets comprising 232 settlements and 10,971 households in ten low-and middle-income countries, representing forest, savanna and coastal ecosystems to analyse how uncultivated nature contributes to multi-dimensional wellbeing and how benefits from nature are distributed between households. The resulting dataset integrates secondary data on rural livelihoods, multidimensional human wellbeing, household demographics, resource tenure and social-ecological context, primarily drawing on nine existing household surveys and their associated contextual information together with selected variables, such as travel time to cities, population density, local area GDP and land use and land cover from existing global datasets. This integrated dataset has been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service) and will be useful for further analyses on nature-wellbeing relationships on its own or in combination with similar datasets

Nature’s contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs

Millions of households globally rely on uncultivated ecosystems for their livelihoods. However, much of the understanding about the broader contribution of uncultivated ecosystems to human wellbeing is still based on a series of small-scale studies due to limited availability of large-scale datasets. We pooled together 11 comparable datasets comprising 232 settlements and 10,971 households in ten low-and middle-income countries, representing forest, savanna and coastal ecosystems to analyse how uncultivated nature contributes to multi-dimensional wellbeing and how benefits from nature are distributed between households. The resulting dataset integrates secondary data on rural livelihoods, multidimensional human wellbeing, household demographics, resource tenure and social-ecological context, primarily drawing on nine existing household surveys and their associated contextual information together with selected variables, such as travel time to cities, population density, local area GDP and land use and land cover from existing global datasets. This integrated dataset has been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service) and will be useful for further analyses on nature-wellbeing relationships on its own or in combination with similar datasets