Managing Oil Palm Plantations More Sustainably: Large-Scale Experiments Within the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Programme

Conversion of tropical forest to agriculture results in reduced habitat heterogeneity, and associated declines in biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Management strategies to increase biodiversity in agricultural landscapes have therefore often focused on increasing habitat complexity; however, the large-scale, long-term ecological experiments that are needed to test the effects of these strategies are rare in tropical systems. Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.)—one of the most widespread and important tropical crops—offers substantial potential for developing wildlife-friendly management strategies because of its long rotation cycles and tree-like structure. Although there is awareness of the need to increase sustainability, practical options for how best to manage oil palm plantations, for benefits to both the environment and crop productivity, have received little research attention. In this paper we introduce the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Programme: a long-term research collaboration between academia and industry in Sumatra, Indonesia. The BEFTA Programme aims to better understand the oil palm agroecosystem and test sustainability strategies. We hypothesise that adjustments to oil palm management could increase structural complexity, stabilize microclimate, and reduce reliance on chemical inputs, thereby helping to improve levels of biodiversity and ecosystem functions. The Programme has established four major components: (1) assessing variability within the plantation under business-as-usual conditions; (2) the BEFTA Understory Vegetation Project, which tests the effects of varying herbicide regimes; (3) the Riparian Ecosystem Restoration in Tropical Agriculture (RERTA) Project, which tests strategies for restoring riparian habitat; and (4) support for additional collaborative projects within the Programme landscape. Across all projects, we are measuring environmental conditions, biodiversity, and ecosystem functions. We also measure oil palm yield and production costs, in order to assess whether suggested sustainability strategies are feasible from an agronomic perspective. Early results show that oil palm plantation habitat is more variable than might be expected from a monoculture crop, and that everyday vegetation management decisions have significant impacts on habitat structure. The BEFTA Programme highlights the value of large-scale collaborative projects for understanding tropical agricultural systems, and offers a highly valuable experimental set-up for improving our understanding of practices to manage oil palm more sustainably.This work was funded by The Isaac Newton Trust Cambridge, Golden Agri Resources, ICOPE (the International Conference on Oil Palm and the Environment), and the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number NE/P00458X/1]

Between China and South Asia: A Middle Asian corridor of crop dispersal and agricultural innovation in the Bronze Age

© The Author(s) 2016. The period from the late third millennium BC to the start of the first millennium AD witnesses the first steps towards food globalization in which a significant number of important crops and animals, independently domesticated within China, India, Africa and West Asia, traversed Central Asia greatly increasing Eurasian agricultural diversity. This paper utilizes an archaeobotanical database (AsCAD), to explore evidence for these crop translocations along southern and northern routes of interaction between east and west. To begin, crop translocations from the Near East across India and Central Asia are examined for wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) from the eighth to the second millennia BC when they reach China. The case of pulses and flax (Linum usitatissimum) that only complete this journey in Han times (206 BC–AD 220), often never fully adopted, is also addressed. The discussion then turns to the Chinese millets, Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica, peaches (Amygdalus persica) and apricots (Armeniaca vulgaris), tracing their movement from the fifth millennium to the second millennium BC when the Panicum miliaceum reaches Europe and Setaria italica Northern India, with peaches and apricots present in Kashmir and Swat. Finally, the translocation of japonica rice from China to India that gave rise to indica rice is considered, possibly dating to the second millennium BC. The routes these crops travelled include those to the north via the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor, across Middle Asia, where there is good evidence for wheat, barley and the Chinese millets. The case for japonica rice, apricots and peaches is less clear, and the northern route is contrasted with that through northeast India, Tibet and west China. Not all these journeys were synchronous, and this paper highlights the selective long-distance transport of crops as an alternative to demic-diffusion of farmers with a defined crop package

Major Factors Affecting Incidence of Childhood Thyroid Cancer in Belarus after the Chernobyl Accident: Do Nitrates in Drinking Water Play a Role?

One of the major health consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986 was a dramatic increase in incidence of thyroid cancer among those who were aged less than 18 years at the time of the accident. This increase has been directly linked in several analytic epidemiological studies to iodine-131 (131I) thyroid doses received from the accident. However, there remains limited understanding of factors that modify the 131Irelated risk. Focusing on post-Chernobyl pediatric thyroid cancer in Belarus, we reviewed evidence of the effects of radiation, thyroid screening, and iodine deficiency on regional differences in incidence rates of thyroid cancer. We also reviewed current evidence on content of nitrate in groundwater and thyroid cancer risk drawing attention to high levels of nitrates in open well water in several contaminated regions of Belarus, i.e. Gomel and Brest, related to the usage of nitrogen fertilizers. In this hypothesis generating study, based on ecological data and biological plausibility, we suggest that nitrate pollution may modify the radiationrelated risk of thyroid cancer contributing to regional differences in rates of pediatric thyroid cancer in Belarus. Analytic epidemiological studies designed to evaluate joint effect of nitrate content in groundwater and radiation present a promising avenue of research and may provide useful insights into etiology of thyroid cancer

Research data supporting "Assessing the effects of oil palm replanting on arthropod biodiversity"

Abstract. 1. Palm oil is the most traded vegetable oil worldwide. Production is concentrated in Southeast Asia, where established oil palm plantations dominate the landscape in many regions. Although levels of biodiversity are much lower than in forest, mature oil palm plantations can support a wide range of generalist species. However, these species may be threatened, as large areas of plantation have already been, or will soon be, replanted as they near the end of their productive life (20 – 30 years). Replanting changes vegetation complexity and microclimate, but short- and long-term effects on biodiversity are largely unstudied. 2. We surveyed an oil palm chronosequence (first-generation mature palms, and replanted second-generation palms aged one, three, and eight years) in an industrial plantation in Riau, Indonesia to assess the impacts of replanting over an 8-year period on arthropods in the ground, understory, and canopy microhabitats. Replanting was carried out using current recommended strategies, which included staggering replanting events to promote landscape-level heterogeneity, retaining mature oil palm riparian buffers, planting a cover crop immediately after replanting, and using chopped mature palms as mulch after clearance. We assessed changes in total arthropod abundance and order-level community composition, as well as specific changes in spider communities. 3. We observed no significant declines in total arthropod abundance after replanting, but arthropod order-level community composition varied across the chronosequence in all microhabitats. These findings were replicated, or more pronounced, in spider-specific analyses. Spider abundance and species richness decreased in the understory in the first year after replanting (although these returned to pre-replanting levels after 3 years), and spider species-level community composition in all microhabitats differed significantly across the chronosequence. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our findings indicate that total arthropod abundance is resilient to replanting of oil palm, but that replanting changes total arthropod and spider community composition and decreases spider abundance and species richness in some microhabitats. Whilst it is somewhat encouraging from a management perspective that recommended replanting strategies maintain overall arthropod abundance, the changes in composition and spider biodiversity that we observed may impact ecosystem processes, such as pest control, in second-generation oil palm plantations, with potential implications for yield. Additional studies that focus on other taxonomic groups and assess the effects of individual replanting strategies are needed before the long-term ecological impacts of replanting on existing oil palm plantations can be fully determined. $$\$$ Methods. Study site. Fieldwork was based in industrial oil palm plantations in Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia (N0 55.559, E101 11.619). We established study sites across a chronosequence spanning four age cohorts in a space-for-time design, to investigate the impacts of replanting over an 8-year post-replanting period. Cohorts were: First-generation mature palms (31 - 33 years old; “Age M”); Second-generation one-year-old palms (“Age 1”); Second-generation three-year-old palms (“Age 3”); and second-generation eight-year-old palms (“Age 8”). $$\$$ Data collection. We measured vegetation height using a drop disc. We classified the dominant understory vegetation type(s) touching the disc into four categories: fallen oil palm frond, herbaceous plant, bare ground, and fern. We measured canopy openness using a spherical densiometer. We measured soil temperature using iButton dataloggers. We sampled arthropods in three microhabitats: ground, understory, and canopy. We sampled ground arthropods using pitfall traps. We sampled understory arthropods using brown sticky traps hung approximately 1.5 m from the ground. We sampled canopy arthropods using insecticide fogging. We identified all arthropods to the order-level using stereomicroscopes. We conducted focussed analyses on spiders in all microhabitats. We collected ground and canopy spiders during pitfall trapping and canopy fogging, as described above. Understory spiders caught on sticky traps were often partially damaged and difficult to identify. We, therefore, collected understory spiders by walking each transect and collecting all spiders located above the ground and within 1 m of the observer. In the lab, we separated juveniles from adults, and identified adults to family and morphospecies using dissecting microscopes and relevant keys. It was not possible to match males and females for all species, and therefore we counted each unique male and female as its own species.MDP received funding for this research from Gates Cambridge Trust and Cambridge Global Food Security. Long-standing partnerships between the University of Cambridge and Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology Research Institute are partly funded by the Isaac Newton Trust Cambridge, Natural Environment Research Council (grant number NE/P00458X/1), and Golden Agri Resources

Termite mounds house a diversity of taxa in oil palm plantations irrespective of understory management

We investigated the effects of oil palm understory vegetation management on termite mound activity and non‐termite inhabitants. We found a diversity of taxa, most of which were unaffected by understory management. Mound volume and termite activity had taxa‐specific effects on abundance. Preserving mounds in oil palm plantations will benefit biodiversity. Abstract in Indonesian is available with online material

Termite mounds house a diversity of taxa in oil palm plantations irrespective of understory management

We investigated the effects of oil palm understory vegetation management on termite mound activity and non‐termite inhabitants. We found a diversity of taxa, most of which were unaffected by understory management. Mound volume and termite activity had taxa‐specific effects on abundance. Preserving mounds in oil palm plantations will benefit biodiversity

Spiders in canopy and ground microhabitats are robust to changes in understory vegetation management practices in mature oil palm plantations (Riau, Indonesia)

Conversion of natural habitats to oil palm agriculture has caused declines in biodiversity and changes in ecosystem functions. To preserve biodiversity we must protect natural habitats, but once oil palm plantations are established, developing more-environmentally friendly management strategies could support higher levels of within-plantation biodiversity and boost the delivery of ecosystem services, possibly increasing oil palm productivity. In this study, we use a before-after control-impact (BACI) experiment to test whether three understory vegetation management strategies affect spider abundance, species richness, and species-level community composition in the canopy and ground microhabitats in mature oil palm plantations. Our treatments encompassed the range of current management practices and included heavy applications of herbicides to eliminate all understory vegetation, maintaining some understory vegetation using business-as-usual herbicide applications, and enhancing understory vegetation by not applying any herbicides. We focussed on spiders, as they are both biologically and economically important in oil palm plantations, owing to their important pest control services. We identified more than 1000 spiders, representing 20 families and 83 morphospecies. The treatments did not affect any aspects of spider biodiversity, although the abundance and species richness of canopy-dwelling spiders changed between pre- and post-treatment sample periods, independent of treatment. Our findings indicate that differences in understory vegetation management practices do not affect spiders, or the pest management services that they provide, in mature oil palm plantations. As such, more extreme changes in management would probably be required to enhance spider biodiversity in oil palm plantations in the long-term. Further studies are needed to determine the practicalities of such approaches, to assess how changes in vegetation management practices affect spiders in additional microhabitats, and how the impacts of such approaches vary across the 20-30 year oil palm commercial life cycle.Support for authors and fieldwork costs was provided by Gates Cambridge Trust, Cambridge Global Food Security, Tim Whitmore Fund, and Jesus College Cambridge. Long-standing partnerships between University of Cambridge and SMARTRI are partly funded by the Isaac Newton Trust Cambridge, the Natural Environment Research Council (grant number NE/P00458X/1) and Golden Agri Resources