Project Tag: 2010-2019

This study shows that forests in New Zealand facing in the direction of westerly storms are shorter and store less carbon than more sheltered forests. However, these forests develop the highest carbon density for a given height when compared with 14 other tropical forests studied using the same approach, suggesting that although wind kept these … Continue reading Airborne laser scanning of natural forests in New Zealand reveals the influences of wind on forest carbon

Local‐scale microclimatic conditions in forest understoreys play a key role in shaping the composition, diversity and function of these ecosystems. Consequently, understanding what drives variation in forest microclimate is critical to forecasting ecosystem responses to global change, particularly in the tropics where many species already operate close to their thermal limits and rapid land‐use transformation … Continue reading Canopy structure and topography jointly constrain the microclimate of human‐modified tropical landscapes

In 1959, a dam was constructed in Zhejiang, China, creating the Thousand Island Lake with isolated islands of different sizes that were originally hilltops. The vegetation on these isolated patches has been undisturbed since the construction of the dam and gradually gone through succession into secondary forests. In this study, we show that the patch … Continue reading Larger fragments have more late‐successional species of woody plants than smaller fragments after 50 years of secondary succession

Almost a decade since the establishment of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), this study investigates the extent to which REDD+ projects are delivering on the promise of co-benefits and the elusive ‘triple-win’ for climate, biodiversity, and local communities. The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCB) is among several leading REDD+ certification standards that … Continue reading Assessing the Progress of REDD+ Projects towards the Sustainable Development Goals

An enduring challenge in ecology is to characterise and understand species richness patterns in tropical regions. Species richness maps produced by stacking species distribution model (SDM) range maps could prove useful in this regard, but little attention has been given to this approach. Here we generate a species richness map by stacking the ranges of … Continue reading Inferring diversity patterns along an elevation gradient from stacked SDMs: A case study on Mesoamerican ferns

Borneo contains some of the world's most biodiverse and carbon-dense tropical forest, but this 750000km2 island has lost 62% of its old-growth forests within the last 40 years. Efforts to protect and restore the remaining forests of Borneo hinge on recognizing the ecosystem services they provide, including their ability to store and sequester carbon. Airborne laser scanning … Continue reading Estimating aboveground carbon density and its uncertainty in Borneo’s structurally complex tropical forests using airborne laser scanning

Topography is a key driver of tropical forest structure and composition, as it constrains local nutrient and hydraulic conditions within which trees grow. Yet, we do not fully understand how changes in forest physiognomy driven by topography impact other emergent properties of forests, such as their aboveground carbon density (ACD). Working in Borneo – at … Continue reading Topography shapes the structure, composition and function of tropical forest landscapes

Hyperspectral imaging is a cutting-edge type of remote sensing used for mapping vegetation properties, rock minerals and other materials. A major drawback of hyperspectral imaging devices is their intrinsic low spatial resolution. In this paper, we propose a method for increasing the spatial resolution of a hyperspectral image by fusing it with an image of … Continue reading Blind image fusion for hyperspectral imaging with the directional total variation

Forest carbon stocks in rapidly developing tropical regions are highly heterogeneous, which challenges efforts to develop spatially-explicit conservation actions. In addition to field-based biodiversity information, mapping of carbon stocks can greatly accelerate the identification, protection and recovery of forests deemed to be of high conservation value (HCV). We combined airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) with satellite imaging and … Continue reading Mapped aboveground carbon stocks to advance forest conservation and recovery in Malaysian Borneo