Weekly Newsletter | | Other topics

News articles on Fragmentation

---

Mongabay.com news articles on fragmentation in blog format. Updated regularly.

Markets could save forests: An interview with Dr. Tom Lovejoy
(3/20/2008) Market mechanisms are increasingly seen as a way to address environmental problems, including tropical deforestation. In particular, compensation for ecosystem services like carbon sequestration — a concept known by the acronym REDD for "reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation" — may someday make conservation a profitable enterprise in which carbon traders are effectively saving rainforests simply by their pursuit of profit. Protecting rainforests and their resident biodiversity would be an unintentional, but happy byproduct of profit-seeking endeavors.


Fragmentation puts Mexican howlers at risk
(3/3/2008) Forest fragmentation is putting mantled howler monkeys in southern Mexico at risk, reports a new study, published in the inaugural issue of the open access e-journal Tropical Conservation Science.


Rainforest fragmentation affects reptiles and amphibians
(2/20/2008) Deforestation of tropical ecosystems is one of the major threats to biological diversity. Anthropogenic activities transform tropical environments into semi-natural landscapes generating a great amount of forest edge that limits with pastures and agricultural lands.


Amazon riparian zones need to be expanded to protect wildlife finds study
(2/19/2008) Strips of forest mandated by Brazilian law along rivers and streams in the Amazon rainforest are too narrow to effectively safeguard biodiversity, reports new research published in the journal Conservation Biology.


Parasites a key to the decline of red colobus monkeys in forest fragments
(10/25/2007) Forest fragmentation threatens biodiversity, often causing declines or local extinctions in a majority of species while enhancing the prospects of a few. A new study from the University of Illinois shows that parasites can play a pivotal role in the decline of species in fragmented forests. This is the first study to look at how forest fragmentation increases the burden of infectious parasites on animals already stressed by disturbances to their habitat.


Experts: parks effectively protect rainforest in Peru
(8/9/2007) High-resolution satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest in Peru shows that land-use and conservation policies have had a measurable impact on deforestation rates. The research is published in the August 9, 2007, on-line edition of Science Express.


Sedentary, not migratory birds, face higher extinction risk
(6/24/2007) Sedentary birds face considerably higher risk of extinction than migratory birds, reports a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The findings have implications for the conservation of increasingly endangered wildlife populations.


Logging roads rapidly expanding in Congo rainforest
(6/7/2007) Logging roads are rapidly expanding in the Congo rainforest, report researchers who have constructed the first satellite-based maps of road construction in Central Africa. The authors say the work will help conservation agencies, governments, and scientists better understand how the expansion of logging is impacting the forest, its inhabitants, and global climate.


Congo forest elephants declining from logging roads, illegal ivory
(4/2/2007) Fast-expanding logging roads in the Congo basin are becoming 'highways of death' for the fierce but elusive forest elephant, according to a new study published in the journal Public Library of Science. Logging roads both provide access to remote forest areas for ivory poachers and serve as conduits of advancing human settlement.


Extinction risk accelerated when interacting human threats interact
(2/7/2007) A new study warns that the simultaneous effect of habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, and climate warming could increase the risk of a species' extinction.


Fragmentation killing species in the Amazon rainforest
(11/27/2006) Forest fragmentation is rapidly eroding biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and could worsen global warming according to research to be published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Rainforest trees can live for centuries, even millennia, so none of us expected things to change too fast. But in just two decades-a wink of time for a thousand year-old tree-the ecosystem has been seriously degraded." said Dr. William Laurance, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and leader of the international team of scientists that conducted the research.


Rainforests face myriad of threats says leading Amazon scholar
(10/16/2006) The world's tropical rainforests are in trouble. Spurred by a global commodity boom and continuing poverty in some of the world's poorest regions, deforestation rates have increased since the close of the 1990s. The usual threats to forests -- agricultural conversion, wildlife poaching, uncontrolled logging, and road construction -- could soon be rivaled, and even exceeded, by climate change and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Understanding these threats is key to preserving forests and their ecological services for current and future generations. William F. Laurance, a distinguished scholar and president of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) -- the world's largest scientific organization dedicated to the study and conservation of tropical ecosystems, is at the forefront of this effort.


Does tropical biodiversity increase during global warming?
(3/30/2006) Forest fragmentation may cause biodiversity loss lasting millions of years according to a new study published in the March 31, 2006 issue of the journal Science. Using cores drilled through 5 kilometers of rock in eastern Colombia and western Venezuela, Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and a team of researchers derived a fossil pollen record for a 72 million-year period with samples ranging from 10 to 82 million years ago.


Amazon rainforest biodiversity due to biology not climate change says study
(12/5/2005) The biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest results from biological factors, not climate change as widely thought, says new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Scientists have long argued that the species richness of tropical forests could be due to climate change-induced fragmentation, known as the "forest refuge: theory, and other external factors that caused geographic isolation. Now, researchers from University College London say that biological influences play a greater role in driving species evolution.


Pandas threatened by roads and forest fragmentation in China
(12/5/2005) China's endangered giant panda is threatened by the rapid expansion of the national highway network, which causing fragmentation of its natural habitat, according to Chinese state media.


Determining Rainforest Reserve Placement
(3/1/2005) After taking note of high-diversity areas and species at greatest risk of extinction, park designers must consider other factors before designating a protected area. It is always important to monitor human use of forest lands before the designation of a national park. The presence of trails, the location of current and predicted human settlement, and land and resource use are all consequential in determining whether the forest land is suitable for protection. If local people are unhappy with restricted access to parklands, chances are they will not respect park boundaries. Along these same lines, planners generally attempt to measure the economic potential of natural forest management of the area as an alternative to deforestation. Also of great importance is the spatial distribution and quality of habitat, Clearly, when given a choice between degraded and natural habitat, it is better to protect the higher-quality area. Researchers also look at species distributions when determining what areas to declare off-limits.


Human Threats to Rainforests - Fuelwood, Roads, Climate
(3/1/2005) FAO estimates that 40 percent of the world (2.6 billion people) rely on fuelwood or charcoal as their primary source of energy for cooking and heating. Fuelwood consumption has increased 250 percent since 1960 (the world's population only increased by 90 percent since 1960).


Reserve Size - Rainforests
(3/1/2005) As forests are set aside as reserves, usually in the regions of the highest diversity, the question of reserve size comes into play. Obviously as much land as possible should be protected to some degree, but whether to keep a single large reservoir or several small reserves has been a controversial issue in conservation biology over the past two decades. Bitter fighting between the two camps in the SLOSS debate (single large or several small) has resulted in squandered time, money, resources, and credibility, and has divided groups that should be united in saving the planet's environment. A single large reserve is advantageous because it possesses larger populations of each species and a more stable environment. On the other hand, a single large reserve is subject to devastation by a single catastrophic event like a fire, flood, or disease. Breaking the reserve into separate pieces reduces the risk of complete population loss by a single event, but diminishes the size of the species populations and puts them at a higher risk of extinction. In addition, if the reserve is too small it may experience system decay resulting in the loss of many species. Small reserves are particularly affected by the invasion of alien species. Studies have shown that domestic mammals will venture up to three miles (5 km) into the rainforest, not only introducing disease and alien plant seeds, but also eating eggs, destroying nests, and crushing seedlings. Finally many species require a certain threshold-population size or range to persist..



Page 1

home | archives | news | XML / RSS feeds


XML / RSS / Syndication options

mongabay.com features more than 250 RSS feeds to meet your specific area of interest

All mongabay.com news
Only rainforest news
Only Brazil news
Only Biodiversity news
Only Climate Change news
Only Madagascar news

more XML feeds