ORCID Profile
0000-0002-1354-0503
Current Organisation
Princeton University
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.TREE.2013.04.005
Abstract: In 2004, Navjot Sodhi and colleagues warned that logging and agricultural conversion of Southeast Asia's forests were leading to a bio ersity disaster. We evaluate this prediction against subsequent research and conclude that most of the fauna of the region can persist in logged forests. Conversely, conversion of primary or logged forests to plantation crops, such as oil palm, causes tremendous bio ersity loss. This loss is exacerbated by increased fire frequency. Therefore, we conclude that preventing agricultural conversion of logged forests is essential to conserving the bio ersity of this region. Our analysis also suggests that, because Southeast Asian forests are tightly tied to global commodity markets, conservation payments commensurate with combined returns from logging and subsequent agricultural production may be required to secure long-term forest protection.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-02-2009
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.CUB.2019.08.026
Abstract: If current trends continue, the tropical forests of the Anthropocene will be much smaller, simpler, steeper and emptier than they are today. They will be more diminished in size and heavily fragmented (especially in lowland wet forests), have reduced structural and species complexity, be increasingly restricted to steeper, less accessible areas, and be missing many heavily hunted species. These changes, in turn, will greatly reduce the quality and quantity of ecosystem services that tropical forests can provide. Driving these changes will be continued clearance for farming and monoculture forest plantations, unsustainable selective logging, overhunting, and, increasingly, climate change. Concerted action by local and indigenous communities, environmental groups, governments, and corporations can reverse these trends and, if successful, provide future generations with a tropical forest estate that includes a network of primary forest reserves robustly defended from threats, recovering logged and secondary forests, and resilient community forests managed for the needs of local people. Realizing this better future for tropical forests and people will require formalisation of land tenure for local and indigenous communities, better-enforced environmental laws, the widescale roll-out of payments for ecosystem service schemes, and sustainable intensification of under-yielding farmland, as well as global-scale societal changes, including reduced consumerism, meat consumption, fossil fuel reliance, and population growth. But the time to act is now, while the opportunity remains to protect a semblance of intact, hyper erse tropical forests.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-03-2010
DOI: 10.1111/J.1523-1739.2010.01495.X
Abstract: There are few empirical data, particularly collected simultaneously from multiple sites, on extinctions resulting from human-driven land-use change. Southeast Asia has the highest deforestation rate in the world, but the resulting losses of biological ersity remain poorly documented. Between November 2006 and March 2008, we conducted bird surveys on six landbridge islands in Malaysia and Indonesia. These islands were surveyed previously for birds in the early 1900 s, when they were extensively forested. Our bird inventories of the islands were nearly complete, as indicated by s ling saturation curves and nonparametric true richness estimators. From zero (Pulau Malawali and Pulau Mantanani) to 15 (Pulau Bintan) diurnal resident landbird species were apparently extirpated since the early 1900 s. Adding comparable but published extinction data from Singapore to our regression analyses, we found there were proportionally fewer forest bird extinctions in areas with greater remaining forest cover. Nevertheless, the statistical evidence to support this relationship was weak, owing to our unavoidably small s le size. Bird species that are restricted to the Indomalayan region, lay few eggs, are heavier, and occupy a narrower habitat breadth, were most vulnerable to extinction on Pulau Bintan. This was the only island where sufficient data existed to analyze the correlates of extinction. Forest preservation and restoration are needed on these islands to conserve the remaining forest avifauna. Our study of landbridge islands indicates that deforestation may increasingly threaten Southeast Asian bio ersity.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-08-2013
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.12162
Abstract: To manage and conserve bio ersity, one must know what is being lost, where, and why, as well as which remedies are likely to be most effective. Metabarcoding technology can characterise the species compositions of mass s les of eukaryotes or of environmental DNA. Here, we validate metabarcoding by testing it against three high-quality standard data sets that were collected in Malaysia (tropical), China (subtropical) and the United Kingdom (temperate) and that comprised 55,813 arthropod and bird specimens identified to species level with the expenditure of 2,505 person-hours of taxonomic expertise. The metabarcode and standard data sets exhibit statistically correlated alpha- and beta- ersities, and the two data sets produce similar policy conclusions for two conservation applications: restoration ecology and systematic conservation planning. Compared with standard bio ersity data sets, metabarcoded s les are taxonomically more comprehensive, many times quicker to produce, less reliant on taxonomic expertise and auditable by third parties, which is essential for dispute resolution.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 07-06-2015
Abstract: Selective logging is one of the most common forms of forest use in the tropics. Although the effects of selective logging on bio ersity have been widely studied, there is little agreement on the relationship between life-history traits and tolerance to logging. In this study, we assessed how species traits and logging practices combine to determine species responses to selective logging, based on over 4000 observations of the responses of nearly 1000 bird species to selective logging across the tropics. Our analysis shows that species traits, such as feeding group and body mass, and logging practices, such as time since logging and logging intensity, interact to influence a species' response to logging. Frugivores and insectivores were most adversely affected by logging and declined further with increasing logging intensity. Nectarivores and granivores responded positively to selective logging for the first two decades, after which their abundances decrease below pre-logging levels. Larger species of omnivores and granivores responded more positively to selective logging than smaller species from either feeding group, whereas this effect of body size was reversed for carnivores, herbivores, frugivores and insectivores. Most importantly, species most negatively impacted by selective logging had not recovered approximately 40 years after logging cessation. We conclude that selective timber harvest has the potential to cause large and long-lasting changes in avian bio ersity. However, our results suggest that the impacts can be mitigated to a certain extent through specific forest management strategies such as lengthening the rotation cycle and implementing reduced impact logging.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 16-03-2009
DOI: 10.1111/J.1523-1739.2008.01158.X
Abstract: Conservationists are increasingly interested in determining the threat status of ecological communities as a key part of their planning efforts. Such assessments are difficult because of conceptual challenges and a lack of generally accepted criteria. We reviewed 12 protocols for assessing the threat status of communities and identified conceptual and operational issues associated with developing a rigorous, transparent, and universal set of criteria for assessing communities, analogous to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List standards for species. We examined how each protocol defines a community and its extinction and how each applies 3 overarching criteria: decline in geographic distribution, restricted geographic distribution, and changes to ecological function. The protocols vary widely in threshold values used to assess declines and distribution size and the time frames used to assess declines, leading to inconsistent assessments of threat status. Few of the protocols specify a scale for measuring distribution size, although assessment outcomes are highly sensitive to scale. Protocols that apply different thresholds for species versus communities tend to require greater declines and more restricted distributions for communities than species to be listed in equivalent threat categories. Eleven of the protocols include a reduction in ecological function as a criterion, but almost all assess it qualitatively rather than quantitatively. We argue that criteria should be explicit and repeatable in their concepts, parameters, and scale, applicable to a broad range of communities, and address synergies between types of threats. Such criteria should focus on distribution size, declines in distribution, and changes to key ecological functions, with the latter based on workable proxies for assessing the severity, scope, and immediacy of degradation. Threat categories should be delimited by thresholds that are assessed at standard scales and are logically consistent with the viability of component species and important ecological functions.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 03-06-2022
Abstract: Protected areas safeguard bio ersity, ensure ecosystem functioning, and deliver ecosystem services to communities. However, only ~16% of the world’s land area is under some form of protection, prompting international calls to protect at least 30% by 2030. We modeled the outcomes of achieving this 30 × 30 target for terrestrial bio ersity conservation, climate change mitigation, and nutrient regulation. We find that the additional ~2.8 million ha of habitat that would be protected would benefit 1134 ± 175 vertebrate species whose habitats currently lack any form of protection, as well as contribute to either avoided carbon emissions or carbon dioxide sequestration, equivalent to 10.9 ± 3.6 GtCO 2 year −1 (28.4 ± 9.4% of the global nature-based climate-change mitigation potential). Furthermore, expansion of the protected area network would increase its ability to regulate water quality and mitigate nutrient pollution by 142.5 ± 31.0 MtN year −1 (28.5 ± 6.2% of the global nutrient regulation potential).
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 21-11-2014
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2016
DOI: 10.1002/FEE.1300
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-11-2015
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-11-2015
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 21-09-2001
No related grants have been discovered for David S. Wilcove.