EMERGING THREATS AND RESEARCH CHALLENGES IN THE TROPICS

William F. Laurance
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama

Date - Thu, 14th May, 2009
Time - 10am
Venue - LT20
Host - Prof Richard Corlett

Abstract ­ I will summarize several new or emerging threats to tropical
ecosystems and consider the research challenges these raise. The drivers of
tropical forest destruction and key perils to biodiversity have changed over
the past two decades. Industrial drivers of forest conversion‹such as
logging, large-scale soy and cattle farming, oil-palm plantations, and oil
and gas development‹have escalated in importance in recent decades, buoyed
by rapid globalization, economic growth, and rising standards of living in
developing nations. Biofuels are likely to grow rapidly as a driver of
future forest destruction. Climate change has emerged as a potentially
serious cause of change in the tropics, and some fauna, such as amphibians,
are being decimated by emerging pathogens. In general, old-growth forests
are vanishing rapidly and being replaced by fragmented, secondary, and
logged forests.

These evolving threats are creating an urgent need for new research. For
example, we know far too little about how well secondary and degraded
habitats will sustain tropical biodiversity. Much is unknown about how
climate change will affect tropical biota at high and low elevations, or how
this will interact with ongoing land-use change. Further, we have only the
most rudimentary idea of how climate change will affect tropical
precipitation‹a crucial deficit given the acute sensitivity of tropical
forests to drought and fire. Information on environmental synergisms is
meager at best. Finally, we need to develop new conservation strategies to
deal with the increasingly industrial drivers of deforestation. I will
highlight these and other issues on the horizon of tropical conservation
science.


See also: Butler and Laurance, 2008. "New strategies for conserving tropical
forests," TIEE. http://news.mongabay.com/Butler_and_Laurance-TREE.pdf