Global changes in the odonate family ratios in response to the tropical forest degradation.

Odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) can indicate the ecological health of aquatic biota within the rich but vulnerable biodiversity of tropical forests. The reaction of odonates to deforestation can be measured by changes in coarse taxonomic ratios. Suborder Zygoptera are thermal conformers susceptible to overheating, having the affinity with shaded, intact sites. Anisoptera have exothermic regulation and better dispersal capacities, suggesting their association with more altered, open environments. Similarly, with an increasing degradation, the proportion of Anisoptera species in assemblages should increase. However, based on the data from different continents, the Zygoptera/Anisoptera ratio may be too simple, strongly biased, and not applicable at the global scale. The main reason is that the most diverse, abundant, and cosmopolitan families, Coenagrionidae (Zygoptera) and Libellulidae (Anisoptera), comprise a great proportion of habitat generalists with high migratory capacity and affinity with open habitats. In this study, we sampled odonates from three bioregions (Indomalaya, Afrotropics, and Neotropics) over the gradient of tropical forest degradation with a comparable sampling effort to assess the suitability of species richness and suborder-based (Zygoptera/Anisoptera) and family-based (Libellulidae/other Anisoptera and Coenagrionidae/other Zygoptera) ratios and their abundance-weighted versions for monitoring tropical forest degradation. Our results show that simple Odonata as well as Zygoptera and Anisoptera richness are poor indicators of the forest biota alteration. Family-level indices weighted by relative abundance, especially those involving Coenagrionidae, were more sensitive to changes in forest conditions compared to suborder-level indices. Collectively, our results suggest that for biomonitoring, where financial resources and time are commonly critical, family-level ratio metrics may be effective tools to indicate even slight alterations of aquatic biota resulting from forest degradation. Although these indices have the potential for broader application, their effectiveness across tropical bioregions warrants further validation.

Perceived Status Of Ecosystem Services Emanating From A Forest Reserve: Evidence From Atewa Range Forest Reserve In Ghana.

Forest ecosystem services play an integral part in the realization of global sustainable development goals due to their potential contribution to climate change mitigation and forest-based livelihoods in marginalized rural parts of the world. The Atewa Forest Range Reserve has been recognized to support forest-based livelihoods in adjacent communities and even urban areas of Ghana. While this contribution is acknowledged, information on the current status of the reserve's ecosystem services which are under serious threats from human-induced activities, remains fragmented. Therefore, through a household survey of 150 respondents complemented by key informant interviews (n = 9), this research assessed the awareness and perceptions of people on the current status of the Atewa Forest Range Reserve and its ecosystem services as well as the major drivers of change that seem to threaten the provision of these ecosystem services. Our results point to provisioning services as the most widely utilized ecosystem service, leading to their significant decline with the potential to affect the livelihoods of the local populations. Respondents' awareness and the relative importance they ascribe to the reserve's ecosystem services reinforced their appreciation for these services and interest in their sustainable management. Our results suggest the need for understanding local perceptions of ecosystem services to guide the prioritization of management decisions for balancing both utilization and conservation goals. A co-management approach that fosters the strategic inclusion of local communities in decision-making regarding the forest reserve could contribute to collaborative relationships and further increase positive perceptions of locals to preserve the reserve's ecological functions.

Land cover changes and carbon dynamics in Central India's dry tropical forests: A 25-year assessment and nature-based eco-restoration approaches.

Anthropogenic land use and land cover changes are major drivers of environmental degradation and declining soil health across heterogeneous landscapes in Central India. To examines the land cover changes and spatio-temporal variations in forest carbon stock and soil organic carbon (SOC) over the past 25 years in central India. Geospatial techniques, coupled with ground measurements were employed to detect changes in land cover, carbon stocks in vegetation, and soil carbon in various vegetation types. The results indicate that forested areas have decreased, while agriculture and habitation have expanded between 1997 and 2022. Vegetation C stocks varied significantly (P < 0.05) from 39.42 to 139.95 Mg ha-1 and the SOC varied from 7.02 to 17.98 Mg ha-1 under different soil profiles across vegetation types, which decreased with soil depth, while the pH and bulk density increased. The maximum bulk density in the soil was found at a depth of 40-60 cm (lower profile) in Bamboo Brake, while the minimum was observed under Dense Mixed Forest at a depth of 0-20 cm (top profile). The topsoil profile contributed 33.6%-39%, the middle profile (20-40 cm) was 33.6%-34.4%, and the lower profile was 26.5%-30.8% of soil organic carbon. The study site has experienced rapid carbon losses due to changes in land cover, such as illegal expansion of agriculture, encroachments into forest fringes, and activities like selective logging and overgrazing, which have degraded dense forests. The ecological engineering of degraded ecosystems poses a great challenge and application of complex biological, mechanical and engineering measures is highly cumbersome, expensive, uneconomical and practically not feasible for upscaling. Nevertheless, proposed nature-based solutions mimic natural reparation and processes provide sustainable interventions for the reclamation of ruined landscapes besides improving ecological integrity and rendering many co-benefits to ecosystems and human societies.

Forest conservation effectiveness of community forests may decline in the future: Evidence from Cambodia.

Community forests (CFs) have been widely established in tropical countries as a tool to achieve forest conservation. Many studies have shown that CFs can contribute to the reduction of deforestation, yet studies that evaluate the contribution of CFs to reducing forest degradation and facilitating forest recovery remain scarce. We investigated the ability of CFs to prevent deforestation and forest degradation and to facilitate forest recovery by using a country-scale longitudinal tree canopy cover and forest cover data set in Cambodia. We found that CFs can prevent both forest degradation and deforestation, but we did not observe a forest recovery effect. We also found that recently established CFs are not effective for forest conservation compared with older CFs. We conclude that, to date, CFs are an effective forest conservation tool; however, this does not necessarily mean that new CFs will be as effective as established ones.

Chronic Degradation of Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests Increases the Incidence of Genotoxicity in Birds.

Multiple studies have shown that exposure to pollutants can increase genotoxic damage in different taxa. However, to our knowledge, the effects of environmental stress have been explored little. In certain stressful ecosystems, such as seasonally dry tropical forests, the combined effects of anthropogenic activities and ongoing global changes can cause an increase in environmental stresses, in turn, may trigger physiological and genetic effects on biodiversity. The present aims to assess changes in the prevalence of genotoxic damage in birds within three states of forest degradation in the Tumbesian Region of Western Ecuador. We used blood samples from 50 bird species to determine the frequency of micronucleus and nuclear abnormalities in erythrocytes. Our results revealed a significant impact of forest degradation on the occurrence probability of micronucleus and nuclear abnormalities at the community level. Localities with higher levels of degradation exhibited higher levels of abnormalities. However, when analyzing the dominant species, we found contrasting responses. While Lepidocolaptes souleyetii showed a reduction in the proportion of nuclear abnormalities from the natural to shrub-dominated localities Troglodytes aedon and Polioptila plumbea showed an increase for semi-natural and shrub-dominated respectively. We concluded that the degradation process of these tropical forests increases the stress of bird community generating genotoxic damage. Bird responses seem to be species-specific, which could explain the differences in changes in bird composition reported in other studies.

Impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on forest vegetation cover, health, and diversity within Doma forest reserve, Nigeria.

Forest encroachment is a common practice that has led to the destruction of canopy trees in the Guinea savanna part of Nigeria. This study investigated the influence of human activities on vegetation health and species composition of Doma forest reserve located in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Landsat satellite data from 1986 to 2021 were utilized to assess forest cover change, land surface temperature (LST), and vegetation indices (VIs). The results show that dense woodland vegetation in the Doma forest reserve depreciated between 1991 and 1999 by 17.82% before increasing by 7.37% between 1999 and 2021. Similarly, vegetation greenness (measured by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Green Chlorophyll Vegetation Index (GCVI), and leaf area index (LAI)) of the forest mirrored the changes observed in the forest cover. The LST extracted for each year was correlated with all VIs, and an inverse relationship was observed in all relationships analyzed. The decline in greenness between 1999 and 2011 was attributed to increasing lumbering, bush burning, and sand dredging activities. Results also showed the current diversity state (H1 = 0.23), evenness (0.63), and the volume of tree (1.31 m3) species in the heart of the Doma forest reserve. However, a high (25%) native tree species in the Fabaceae family correlated with a dramatic increase in the VIs and an increase in dense woodland cover indicating the importance of Fabaceae in forest ecosystem regeneration.

Land use and land cover changes implications on biodiversity in the Owabi catchment of Atwima Nwabiagya North District, Ghana.

This paper examined land use and land cover (LULC) change and implications to biodiversity in the Owabi catchment of Atwima Nwabiagya North District in Ghana from 1991 to 2021 using remote sensing, and geographic information systems (GIS), with participatory methods such as interviews and questionnaires with a sample size of 200 participants. The use of supervised classification with maximum likelihood algorithm in QGIS was employed to generate LULC maps of 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021. Molusce Plugin in QGIS was applied to predict probabilities of LULC changes in 10 years (2021-2031). The results showed that high-density forest has disappeared from 1991 to 2021 while built-up has increased and remained the most dominant LULC from 2011 to 2021. There is a continual decline in the number of plant and animal species in and around the Owabi catchment. This can be attributed to the decline of high-density forests and increased built-up in the study area through human actions. The study identified the influence of human activities as the key forces of LULC change to biodiversity loss. This problem stemmed from the taste for housing and trading activities in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area which has resulted in an increasing demand for settlement because of its closeness to Kumasi and its environs. The study recommends that stringent preventive measures should be developed and enforced by various stakeholders including the Forestry Commission, Ghana Water Company Limited, Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the District/Municipal Assemblies to safeguard the forest from human activities. This recommendation will help these agencies to keep abreast with changes in LULC in the various communities and factors such as changes during the planning of the communities.

Effects of forest degradation classification on the uncertainty of aboveground carbon estimates in the Amazon.

BACKGROUND: Tropical forests are critical for the global carbon budget, yet they have been threatened by deforestation and forest degradation by fire, selective logging, and fragmentation. Existing uncertainties on land cover classification and in biomass estimates hinder accurate attribution of carbon emissions to specific forest classes. In this study, we used textural metrics derived from PlanetScope images to implement a probabilistic classification framework to identify intact, logged and burned forests in three Amazonian sites. We also estimated biomass for these forest classes using airborne lidar and compared biomass uncertainties using the lidar-derived estimates only to biomass uncertainties considering the forest degradation classification as well. RESULTS: Our classification approach reached overall accuracy of 0.86, with accuracy at individual sites varying from 0.69 to 0.93. Logged forests showed variable biomass changes, while burned forests showed an average carbon loss of 35%. We found that including uncertainty in forest degradation classification significantly increased uncertainty and decreased estimates of mean carbon density in two of the three test sites. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that the attribution of biomass changes to forest degradation classes needs to account for the uncertainty in forest degradation classification. By combining very high-resolution images with lidar data, we could attribute carbon stock changes to specific pathways of forest degradation. This approach also allows quantifying uncertainties of carbon emissions associated with forest degradation through logging and fire. Both the attribution and uncertainty quantification provide critical information for national greenhouse gas inventories.

Wind turbines in managed forests partially displace common birds.

Wind turbines are increasingly being installed in forests, which can lead to land use disputes between climate mitigation efforts and nature conservation. Environmental impact assessments precede the construction of wind turbines to ensure that wind turbines are installed only in managed or degraded forests that are of potentially low value for conservation. It is unknown, nevertheless, if animals deemed of minor relevance in environmental impact assessments are affected by wind turbines in managed forests. We investigated the impact of wind turbines on common forest birds, by counting birds along an impact-gradient of wind turbines in 24 temperate forests in Hesse, Germany. During 860 point counts, we counted 2231 birds from 45 species. Bird communities were strongly related to forest structure, season and the rotor diameter of wind turbines, but were not related to wind turbine distance. For instance, bird abundance decreased in structure-poor (-38%) and monocultural (-41%) forests with wind turbines, and in young (-36%) deciduous forests with larger and more wind turbines (-24%). Overall, our findings suggest that wind turbines in managed forests partially displace common forest birds. If these birds are displaced to harsh environments, wind turbines might indirectly contribute to a decline of their populations. Yet, forest bird communities are locally more sensitive to forest quality than to wind turbine presence. To prevent further displacement of forest animals, forests of lowest quality for wildlife should be preferred in spatial planning for wind turbines, for instance small and structure-poor monocultures along highways.

Forest restoration in a time of fire: perspectives from tall, wet eucalypt forests subject to stand-replacing wildfires.

Wildfires have the potential to add considerably to the already significant challenge of achieving effective forest restoration in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. While fire can sometimes promote forest restoration (e.g. by creating otherwise rare, early successional habitats), it can thwart it in others (e.g. by depleting key patch types and stand structures). Here we outline key considerations in facilitating restoration of some tall wet temperate forest ecosystems and some boreal forest ecosystems where the typical fire regime is rare high-severity stand-replacing fire. Some of these ecosystems are experiencing altered fire regimes such as increased fire extent, severity and/or frequency. Achieving good restoration outcomes in such ecosystems demands understanding fire regimes and their impacts on vegetation and other elements of biodiversity and then selecting ecosystem-appropriate management interventions. Potential actions range from doing nothing (as the ecosystem already maintains full post-fire regenerative capacity) to interventions prior to a conflagration like prescribed burning to limit the risks of high-severity fire, excluding activities that impair post-fire recovery (e.g. post-fire logging), and artificial seeding where natural regeneration fails. The most ecologically effective actions will be ecosystem-specific and context-specific and informed by knowledge of the ecosystem in question (such as plant life-history attributes) and inter-relationships with attributes like vegetation condition at the time it is burnt (e.g. young versus old forest). This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration'.

Improved household living standards can restore dry tropical forests.

Despite multiple approaches over the last several decades to harmonize conservation and development goals in the tropics, forest-dependent households remain the poorest in the world. Durable housing and alternatives to fuelwood for cooking are critical needs to reduce multi-dimensional poverty. These improvements also potentially reduce pressure on forests and alleviate forest degradation. We test this possibility in dry tropical forests of the Central Indian Highlands where tribal and other marginalized populations rely on forests for energy, construction materials, and other livelihood needs. Based on a remotely sensed measure of forest degradation and a 5000 household survey of forest use, we use machine learning (causal forests) and other statistical methods to quantify treatment effects of two improved living standards-alternatives to fuelwood for cooking and non-forest-based housing material-on forest degradation in 1, 2, and 5 km buffers around 500 villages. Both improved living standards had significant treatment effects (-0.030 ± 0.078, -0.030 ± 0.023, 95% CI), respectively, with negative values indicating less forest degradation, within 1 km buffers around villages. Treatment effects were lower with increasing distance from villages. Results suggest that improved living standards can both reduce forest degradation and alleviate poverty. Forest restoration efforts can target improved living standards for local communities without conflicts over land tenure or taking land out of production to plant trees.

Forest Fire Characterization Using Landsat-8 Satellite Data in Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary.

A forest fire has caused a loss of biodiversity and forest heterogeneity and resulted in forest degradation and fragmentation. Remote sensing techniques have been widely used for locating and delineating forest fires. The present study has employed Landsat-8 satellite data during 2014-2020 for spatiotemporal analysis of forest fire in Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary (DWS). Normalized burn ratio (NBR) has been used to delineate forest fire-affected locations along with visual interpretation techniques. The results showed that an extensive area was burnt and deforested due to forest fire in DWS during 2014-2020. The burned areas due to forest fires within the notified forest boundary in DWS were 12.11 km2, 25.5 km2, 22.45 km2, 9.11 km2, 24.44 km2, 10.09 km2, and 1 km2 during 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, respectively, whereas burned areas outside notified boundary were 2.24 km2, 4.15 km2, 1.48 km2, 3.29 km2, 3.31 km2, 1.9 km2, and 0.1 km2. According to visual image interpretation, the highest burned area was found in 2015 (25.5 km2), whilst the least affected was found in 2020 (1 km2), and fires were mainly seen in the degraded forests and open forest regions. The present study revealed that forest fire is more dominant in Asanbani, Pardih, Bhelaipahari, Gobargushi, Bamri, Andharjhor, Somadih, Koira, Tetla, Bochkamkocha, Sah, Rbera, and Jamdih locations/beats in DWS. Thereby, these forest beats need attention from forest managers to control fire-mediated forest degradation for the conservation and restoration of forests in DWS.

Impact of Plantation Induced Forest Degradation on the Outbreak of Emerging Infectious Diseases-Wayanad District, Kerala, India.

The world has been facing a pandemic owing to COVID-19. We have also seen the geographic expansion and outbreaks of other emerging infectious diseases (EID) in recent years. This paper investigates the direct and indirect effects of land use land cover change (LULCC) on EID outbreaks in the context of Wayanad District of Kerala, India. Wayanad is in the vulnerable tropical forested region, and it is named as one of the four environmental change hotspots. The focus of this project is mainly three EIDs prevalent in this region: Kyasanur forest disease (KFD), Dengue and Leptospirosis. Our results, based on topographical map, remote sensing and extensive field work, show that the natural forest in Wayanad was replaced with agriculture and forest plantation during 1950-2018. This paper further suggests that encroachment of forest by forest plantation causes the human-animal conflict resulting in the outbreak of KFD cases. Our analysis reveals that a high number of Dengue cases is found in the forested regions of the district and over the adjacent human-made agriculture plantation areas. High and medium number of Leptospirosis cases contain a high portion of land area devoted to paddy cultivation and agricultural plantation. In summary, the results clearly show the linkage between the outbreak of above mentioned EIDs and LULCC in the context of Wayanad district, Kerala. We also discuss in detail the causal pathway involving human-environmental dynamics through which plantation leads to the outbreak of KFD. Replacing forests with plantations poses an alarming threat of disease outbreak in the community.

Rethinking forest monitoring for more meaningful global forest landscape change assessments.

Forest ecosystems play an indispensable role in addressing various pressing sustainability and social-ecological challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem services deterioration, hence the monitoring of the world's forests is crucial. As part of the global forest assessment workflow, a forest is generally classified and mapped based on land use and/or using a tree canopy cover threshold. In this paper, we examine the limitations of this approach and argue that the use of a land use-based forest definition and tree canopy cover thresholds can overlook forest degradation and enhancement, disguise the actual status of forest landscapes, and misinform management planning. These limitations can delay the development and implementation of forest restoration and conservation measures. To help overcome these issues, we propose some enhancements to the global forest assessment workflow, including the sharing of spatial data and inclusion of tree canopy cover estimates in assessment reports. Such enhancements are needed to achieve more meaningful forest monitoring and reporting in the context of global environmental initiatives, such as those related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, forest restoration, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem services monitoring.

Forest degradation limits the complementarity and quality of animal seed dispersal.

Forest degradation changes the structural heterogeneity of forests and species communities, with potential consequences for ecosystem functions including seed dispersal by frugivorous animals. While the quantity of seed dispersal may be robust towards forest degradation, changes in the effectiveness of seed dispersal through qualitative changes are poorly understood. Here, we carried out extensive field sampling on the structure of forest microhabitats, seed deposition sites and plant recruitment along three characteristics of forest microhabitats (canopy cover, ground vegetation and deadwood) in Europe's last lowland primeval forest (Bialowieza, Poland). We then applied niche modelling to study forest degradation effects on multi-dimensional seed deposition by frugivores and recruitment of fleshy-fruited plants. Forest degradation was shown to (i) reduce the niche volume of forest microhabitat characteristics by half, (ii) homogenize the spatial seed deposition within and among frugivore species, and (iii) limit the regeneration of plants via changes in seed deposition and recruitment. Our study shows that the loss of frugivores in degraded forests is accompanied by a reduction in the complementarity and quality of seed dispersal by remaining frugivores. By contrast, structure-rich habitats, such as old-growth forests, safeguard the diversity of species interactions, forming the basis for high-quality ecosystem functions.

Relationship between wood fuel energy consumption and forest degradation at regional and sub-regional levels of sub-Saharan Africa: the role of control of corruption and government effectiveness.

This paper examines the effect of wood fuel energy consumption on forest degradation at regional and sub-regional levels of sub-Saharan Africa by taking into consideration the role of control of corruption and government effectiveness. To achieve the objective of the study, system generalized method of moments was used on a sample of 45 sub-Saharan African countries over the 2005-2013 period. The estimated results of the study revealed that wood fuel consumption impact positively on forest degradation at sub-Saharan Africa's level. In other words, the finding indicated that wood fuel consumption is a significant driver of forest degradation at the regional level of sub-Saharan Africa. While at sub-regional levels of sub-Saharan Africa, the result revealed that wood fuel consumption impact positively on forest degradation in southern, western, and central Africa only. In summary, the finding showed that forest degradation is increased by wood fuel consumption at both regional and sub-regional levels of sub-Saharan Africa with the exception of east Africa where the impact of wood fuel consumption on forest degradation is insignificant. On the other hand, control of corruption and government effectiveness were found to have negative effect on forest degradation at both regional and sub-regional levels of sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, intensifying fight against corruption and ensuring effective governance can assist to reduce degradation of forests in the region. As such, policy makers should focus on improving these institutional quality indicators to fight degradation of forests in the region.

Madagascar's fire regimes challenge global assumptions about landscape degradation.

Narratives of landscape degradation are often linked to unsustainable fire use by local communities. Madagascar is a case in point: the island is considered globally exceptional, with its remarkable endemic biodiversity viewed as threatened by unsustainable anthropogenic fire. Yet, fire regimes on Madagascar have not been empirically characterised or globally contextualised. Here, we contribute a comparative approach to determining relationships between regional fire regimes and global patterns and trends, applied to Madagascar using MODIS remote sensing data (2003-2019). Rather than a global exception, we show that Madagascar's fire regimes are similar to 88% of tropical burned area with shared climate and vegetation characteristics, and can be considered a microcosm of most tropical fire regimes. From 2003-2019, landscape-scale fire declined across tropical grassy biomes (17%-44% excluding Madagascar), and on Madagascar at a relatively fast rate (36%-46%). Thus, high tree loss anomalies on the island (1.25-4.77× the tropical average) were not explained by any general expansion of landscape-scale fire in grassy biomes. Rather, tree loss anomalies centred in forests, and could not be explained by landscape-scale fire escaping from savannas into forests. Unexpectedly, the highest tree loss anomalies on Madagascar (4.77×) occurred in environments without landscape-scale fire, where the role of small-scale fires (<21 h [0.21 km2 ]) is unknown. While landscape-scale fire declined across tropical grassy biomes, trends in tropical forests reflected important differences among regions, indicating a need to better understand regional variation in the anthropogenic drivers of forest loss and fire risk. Our new understanding of Madagascar's fire regimes offers two lessons with global implications: first, landscape-scale fire is declining across tropical grassy biomes and does not explain high tree loss anomalies on Madagascar. Second, landscape-scale fire is not uniformly associated with tropical forest loss, indicating a need for socio-ecological context in framing new narratives of fire and ecosystem degradation.

Carbon payments can cost-effectively improve logging sustainability in the Amazon.

Selective logging is pervasive across the tropics and unsustainable logging depletes forest biodiversity and carbon stocks. Improving the sustainability of logging will be crucial for meeting climate targets. Carbon-based payment for ecosystem service schemes, including REDD+, give economic value to standing forests and can protect them from degradation, but only if the revenue from carbon payments is greater than the opportunity cost of forgone or reduced logging. We currently lack understanding of whether carbon payments are feasible for protecting Amazonian forests from logging, despite the Amazon holding the largest unexploited timber reserves and an expanding logging sector. Using financial data and inventories of >660,000 trees covering 52,000 ha of Brazilian forest concessions, we estimate the carbon price required to protect forests from logging. We estimate that a carbon price of $7.90 per tCO2 is sufficient to match the opportunity costs of all logging and fund protection of primary forest. Alternatively, improving the sustainability of logging operations by ensuring a greater proportion of trees are left uncut requires only slightly higher investments of $7.97-10.45 per tCO2. These prices fall well below the current compliance market rate and demonstrate a cost-effective opportunity to safeguard large tracts of the Amazon rainforest from further degradation.

Using land-use history and multiple baselines to determine bird responses to cocoa agroforestry.

Agroforests can play an important role in biodiversity conservation in complex landscapes. A key factor distinguishing among agroforests is land-use history - whether agroforests are established inside forests or on historically forested but currently open lands. The disparity between land-use histories means the appropriate biodiversity baselines may differ, which should be accounted for when assessing the conservation value of agroforests. Specifically, comparisons between multiple baselines in forest and open land could enrich understanding of species' responses by contextualizing them. We made such comparisons based on data from a recently published meta-analysis of the effects of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) agroforestry on bird diversity. We regrouped rustic, mixed shade cocoa, and low shade cocoa agroforests, based on land-use history, into forest-derived and open-land-derived agroforests and compared bird species diversity (species richness, abundance, and Shannon's index values) between forest and open land, which represented the 2 alternative baselines. Bird diversity was similar in forest-derived agroforests and forests (Hedges' g* estimate [SE] = -0.3144 [0.3416], p = 0.36). Open-land-derived agroforests were significantly less diverse than forests (g* = 1.4312 [0.6308], p = 0.023) and comparable to open lands (g* = -0.1529 [0.5035], p = 0.76). Our results highlight how land-use history determined the conservation value of cocoa agroforests. Forest-derived cocoa agroforests were comparable to the available - usually already degraded - forest baselines, but entail future degradation risks. In contrast, open-land-derived cocoa agroforestry may offer restoration opportunities. Our results showed that comparisons among multiple baselines may inform relative contributions of agroforestry systems to bird conservation on a landscape scale.

El historial de uso del suelo y su comparación con diferentes lineas base informan la evaluación del valor de agrobosques de cacao para la coservación de aves Resumen Los agrobosques pueden tener un papel importante en la conservación de la biodiversidad dentro de paisajes complejos. Un factor importante que distingue a un agrobosque de otro es el historial de uso del suelo - si el agrobosque está establecido dentro de un bosque o en un área que históricamente fue un bosque y actualmente es un campo abierto. Esta disparidad en el historial del uso del suelo implica que las líneas base de biodiversidad pueden diferir, lo cual debe ser tomado en cuenta cuando se analice el valor de conservación de los agrobosques; específicamente, la contextualización de las comparaciones entre la variedad de líneas base en el bosque y el campo abierto podría enriquecer el entendimiento de la respuesta que tienen las especies. Realizamos dichas comparaciones basadas en datos de un metaanálisis recientemente publicado sobre los efectos de la agrosilvicultura de cacao (Theobroma cacao) en la diversidad de aves. Reagrupamos los agrobosques de cacao (rústico, sombra mixta y sombra mínima) en agrobosques derivados del bosque y agrobosques derivados del campo abierto en función al  historial de uso del suelo y comparamos la diversidad de especies de aves (valores de riqueza de especies, abundancia e índice de Shannon) entre bosque y campo abierto, que representaron las dos líneas base alternativas. La diversidad de aves fue similar en los bosques y en agrobosques derivados de ellos (estimado g* de Hedges [SE] = -0.3144 [0.3416], p = 0.36). Los agrobosques derivados del campo abierto fueron significativamente menos diversos que los bosques (g* = 1.4312 [0.6308], p = 0.023) y comparables con los campos abiertos (g* = -0.1529 [0.5035], p = 0.76). Nuestros resultados destacan cómo el historial de uso del suelo determinó el valor de conservación de los agrobosques de cacao. Los agrobosques de cacao derivados del bosque fueron comparables con las líneas base - generalmente ya degradadas - de bosque disponibles, pero conllevan riesgo de degradación futuro. Al contrario, los agrobosques de cacao derivados del campo abierto podrián ofrecer oportunidades de restauración. Nuestros resultados muestran que las comparaciones entre varias líneas base pueden informar sobre las contribuciones relativas de la agrosilvicultura a la conservación de aves en la escala de paisaje.

Ecological Effect of Ecological Engineering Projects on Low-Temperature Forest Cover in Great Khingan Mountain, China.

The evaluation of ecological restoration projects can provide support for further strengthening the efforts of ecological restoration work and implementing the strategic objectives of the ecological region. Considering the current problem of the single evaluation index, this study evaluated the implementation effect of ecological projects from different temporal and spatial dimensions. Based on the MODIS vegetation index time series data, this study first computed the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 15.3.1 of Great Khingan Mountain (GKM) to evaluate the impact of ecological engineering on land use change and land productivity. As a common indicator, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values showed a trend of a decrease and then gradual increase after the start of the Natural Forest Protection Project (NFPP) II, which was related to the land use changes from the forest to the grassland during the implementation of the NFPP. However, land productivity maintained a steady trend because of the transition between the forest and grassland. Meanwhile, to detect changes in vegetation at a smaller scale, the LandTrendr algorithm was used to identify the magnitude of forest disturbance, the years when it occurred, and the year of restoration. After implementing the ecological project, the forests in the GKM region were only partially disturbed, and most of the forests in most areas maintained a stable trend. Our study highlighted the varying effectiveness of different indexes for NFPP and evaluated the ecological impact of ecological projects from multiple perspectives.