Participation in biocultural diversity conservation : insights from five Amazonian examples

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MThe past three decades have seen the emergence of myriads of initiatives focused on conserving, revitalizing, and maintaining Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) as part of biocultural approaches to conservation. However, the extent to which these efforts have been participatory has been often overlooked. In this chapter, we focus on five prominent ILK conservation initiatives in the Amazon Basin to examine the participation of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in ILK conservation. Our review illustrates several examples of ILK conservation initiatives offering substantial opportunities for meaningful IPLC participation over the long term. Overall, our case studies suggest that the development of robust and inclusive decision-making processes is essential to optimize IPLC participation in ILK conservation, thereby increasing the legitimacy of these initiatives. Our review is not an exhaustive account of the breadth and depth of all initiatives promoting participatory biocultural conservation in this region, but it illustrates that there are many strategies that can help foster IPLC engagement and lead the participatory turn in biocultural conservation

Forest biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services

Forests are critical habitats for biodiversity and they are also essential for the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services that are important to human well-being. There is increasing evidence that biodiversity contributes to forest ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. Here we provide a review of forest ecosystem services including biomass production, habitat provisioning services, pollination, seed dispersal, resistance to wind storms, fire regulation and mitigation, pest regulation of native and invading insects, carbon sequestration, and cultural ecosystem services, in relation to forest type, structure and diversity. We also consider relationships between forest biodiversity and multifunctionality, and trade-offs among ecosystem services. We compare the concepts of ecosystem processes, functions and services to clarify their definitions. Our review of published studies indicates a lack of empirical studies that establish quantitative and causal relationships between forest biodiversity and many important ecosystem services. The literature is highly skewed; studies on provisioning of nutrition and energy, and on cultural services, delivered by mixed-species forests are under-represented. Planted forests offer ample opportunity for optimising their composition and diversity because replanting after harvesting is a recurring process. Planting mixed-species forests should be given more consideration as they are likely to provide a wider range of ecosystem services within the forest and for adjacent land uses. This review also serves as the introduction to this special issue of Biodiversity and Conservation on various aspects of forest biodiversity and ecosystem services

A review of ecosystem services research in Australia reveals a gap in integrating climate change and impacts on ecosystem services

Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. A substantial part of human well-being is dependent on the sustainable flow of ES. Climate change, economic growth and an increasing human population has placed greater pressures on global ES. Australias ecosystems are among the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Hence, a comprehensive review is necessary to explore ES research that integrates climate change impacts. Our review reveals that ES research in Australia, stimulated in the early 2000s, has continued to increase consistently after the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Australian ES research has primarily focused on the impact of land-use change and management, policy and governance issues, but less on the impact of climate change on ES. Climate change models show that climate will threaten most of the main ES in Australia by 2050. For the sustainable management of these ES-incorporating climate change-ecosystem and ES specific adaptations are suggested as the best sustainable policy tools for the future. Therefore, further research needs to incorporate climate change and ES for evidence-based sustainable management of Australias ES. We provide the following recommendations for future ES research: (i) evaluating the extent and trend of climate change impacts on ES through consideration of different climate change scenarios; (ii) preparing vulnerability maps of important ES that are likely to be sensitive to climate change and (iii) developing ecosystem and ES specific adaptations to climate change that involve key stakeholders. © 2014 Taylor and Francis

Spatial congruence and divergence between ecosystem services and biodiversity in a tropical forested landscape

Tropical forests are the storehouse of both ecosystem services and biodiversity but the interlinkages between these two components of ecosystems are yet to be fully explored. We utilized expert opinion to assess the key and multiple ecosystem services, and biodiversity in a tropical landscape. We found that key and multiple ecosystem services supply varies across the landscape and that forest disturbances reduce the capacity to supply those ecosystem services. We also found that a spatial congruence is likely to occurs between high-potential biodiversity and high-potential global climate regulation ecosystem service in the intact rainforest areas while a spatial divergence is likely to occurs in the sclerophyll and other disturbed and low tree abundance forested areas. Overall in a tropical forested landscape, a spatial congruence between high-potential multiple ecosystem services supply and high-potential biodiversity values is likely to occurs provided that the multiple ecosystem services are forest-based. Along with conserving relatively intact forests, management intervention priorities should focus on increasing tree abundance both in non-tree vegetated land cover areas and within disturbed forested areas to increase the high-potential multiple ecosystem services supply at the landscape level. A careful selection of multiple ecosystem services is required to integrate both high-potential multiple ecosystem services and high-potential biodiversity in tropical forest management. © 2018 Elsevier LtdAssociated Grant:Skyrail Rainforest Foundation, Australia for the partial funding of this research

Assessing regulating and provisioning ecosystem services in a contrasting tropical forest landscape

Ecosystem services are the bridge between nature and society, and are essential elements of community well-being. The Wet Tropics Australia, is environmentally and biologically diverse, and supplies numerous ecosystem services. It contributes to the community well-being of this region, Australian national economy and global climate change mitigation efforts. However, the ecosystem services in the region have rarely been assessed undermining strategic landscape planning to sustain their future flow. In this study, we attempted to: (i) assess the quantity of five regulating ecosystem services - global climate regulation, air quality regulation, erosion regulation, nutrient regulation, and cyclone protection, and three provisioning ecosystem services - habitat provision, energy provision and timber provision across rainforests, sclerophyll forests and rehabilitated plantation forests; (ii) evaluate the variation of supply of those regulating and provisioning ecosystem services across environmental gradients, such as rainfall, temperature, and elevation; (iii) show the relationships among those ecosystem services; and (iv) identify the hotspots of single and multiple ecosystem services supply across the landscape. The results showed that rainforests possess a very high capacity to supply single and multiple ecosystem services, and the hotspots for most of the regulating and provisioning ecosystem services are found in upland rainforest followed by lowland rainforest, and upland sclerophyll forest. Elevation, rainfall and temperature gradients along with forest structure are the main determinant factors for the quantity of ecosystem services supplied across the three forest types. The correlation among ecosystem services may be positive or negative depending on the ecosystem service category and vegetation type. The rehabilitated plantation forests may provide some ecosystem services comparable to the rainforest. The results demonstrated disturbance regimes (such as tropical cyclones) may have influenced the usual spatial trend of ecosystem service values. This study will assist decision makers in incorporating ecosystem services into their natural resource management planning, and for practitioners to identify the areas with higher values of specific and multiple ecosystem services. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Ecosystem services capacity across heterogeneous forest types: Understanding the interactions and suggesting pathways for sustaining multiple ecosystem services

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. As ecosystem services supply from tropical forests is declining due to deforestation and forest degradation, much effort is essential to sustain ecosystem services supply from tropical forested landscapes, because tropical forests provide the largest flow of multiple ecosystem services among the terrestrial ecosystems. In order to sustain multiple ecosystem services, understanding ecosystem services capacity across heterogeneous forest types and identifying certain ecosystem services that could be managed to leverage positive effects across the wider bundle of ecosystem services are required. We sampled three forest types, tropical rainforests, sclerophyll forests, and rehabilitated plantation forests, over an area of 32,000 m2from Wet Tropics bioregion, Australia, aiming to compare supply and evaluate interactions and patterns of eight ecosystem services (global climate regulation, air quality regulation, erosion regulation, nutrient regulation, cyclone protection, habitat provision, energy provision, and timber provision). On average, multiple ecosystem services were highest in the rainforests, lowest in sclerophyll forests, and intermediate in rehabilitated plantation forests. However, a wide variation was apparent among the plots across the three forest types. Global climate regulation service had a synergistic impact on the supply of multiple ecosystem services, while nutrient regulation service was found to have a trade-off impact. Considering multiple ecosystem services, most of the rehabilitated plantation forest plots shared the same ordination space with rainforest plots in the ordination analysis, indicating that rehabilitated plantation forests may supply certain ecosystem services nearly equivalent to rainforests. Two synergy groups and one trade-off group were identified. Apart from conserving rainforests and sclerophyll forests, our findings suggest two additional integrated pathways to sustain the supply of multiple ecosystem services from a heterogeneous tropical forest landscape: (i) rehabilitation of degraded forests aiming to provide global climate regulation and habitat provision ecosystem services and (ii) management intervention to sustain global climate regulation and habitat provision ecosystem services

Spatial congruence and divergence between ecosystem services and biodiversity in a tropical forested landscape

Tropical forests are the storehouse of both ecosystem services and biodiversity but the interlinkages between these two components of ecosystems are yet to be fully explored. We utilized expert opinion to assess the key and multiple ecosystem services, and biodiversity in a tropical landscape. We found that key and multiple ecosystem services supply varies across the landscape and that forest disturbances reduce the capacity to supply those ecosystem services. We also found that a spatial congruence is likely to occurs between high-potential biodiversity and high-potential global climate regulation ecosystem service in the intact rainforest areas while a spatial divergence is likely to occurs in the sclerophyll and other disturbed and low tree abundance forested areas. Overall in a tropical forested landscape, a spatial congruence between high-potential multiple ecosystem services supply and high-potential biodiversity values is likely to occurs provided that the multiple ecosystem services are forest-based. Along with conserving relatively intact forests, management intervention priorities should focus on increasing tree abundance both in non-tree vegetated land cover areas and within disturbed forested areas to increase the high-potential multiple ecosystem services supply at the landscape level. A careful selection of multiple ecosystem services is required to integrate both high-potential multiple ecosystem services and high-potential biodiversity in tropical forest management. © 2018 Elsevier Lt

Degraded tropical rain forests possess valuable carbon storage opportunities in a complex, forested landscape

Tropical forests are major contributors to the terrestrial global carbon pool, but this pool is being reduced via deforestation and forest degradation. Relatively few studies have assessed carbon storage in degraded tropical forests. We sampled 37,000 m 2 of intact rainforest, degraded rainforest and sclerophyll forest across the greater Wet Tropics bioregion of northeast Australia. We compared aboveground biomass and carbon storage of the three forest types, and the effects of forest structural attributes and environmental factors that influence carbon storage. Some degraded forests were found to store much less aboveground carbon than intact rainforests, whereas others sites had similar carbon storage to primary forest. Sclerophyll forests had lower carbon storage, comparable to the most heavily degraded rainforests. Our findings indicate that under certain situations, degraded forest may store as much carbon as intact rainforests. Strategic rehabilitation of degraded forests could enhance regional carbon storage and have positive benefits for tropical biodiversity