How long does it take for logging roads to recover from clearance?

Roads are generally terrible for biodiversity. They fragment habitat, can increase habitat loss and hunting as a result of increased access, and cause direct loss of biodiversity as a result of collisions. However, not all roads are the same. Some are massive, permanent structures, while others are temporary, dirt tracks that may seemingly disappear once they fall into disuse.

One example of ephemeral roads is those that logging companies construct in tropical forests to provide access and transport of logs. There has long been concern that these roads can increase the risk of fires occurring, as well as increasing access for hunting, and other forms of forest exploitation. However, in a recent(ish) paper* has shown that some of the negative effects of logging roads are relatively transient.

In the paper, Fritz Kleinschroth and colleagues showed that in Central African forests, after 30 years of recovery logging roads had similar canopy cover, species diversity, and leaf litter to logged forests nearby* . However, the amount of carbon stored in the form of biomass lagged behind and was only 6% of that seen for logged forests after 30 years of recovery. At this rate, biomass recovery would take more than 300 years.This incredibly slow recovery at first appears puzzling, given that secondary forests, which have had almost all their trees cut down in the past and turned into agricultural fields, tend to take between 60-100 years to recover biomass to pre-disturbance levels (see here for a blog post and here for a recent paper on this). However, the probable cause of this delayed recovery is the compaction of soils on the roads by heavy vehicles which reduces seed germination and root growth***. Taken together the authors suggest these results indicate that logging roads have the potential to act as areas in which timber species could regenerate and that they may become inaccessible to hunters within 10 years.

So how does this study compare to similar ones carried out previously? Firstly, this study is a little different because it is one of the few that used chronosequences to assess recovery, and so the only study I know of which can assess longer-term dynamics on logging roads. However, other studies present a similar picture for the recovery of biomass and forest structure – forest canopy cover recovers relatively quickly (see here and here), but biomass and basal area lag behind (see here and here). The major difference between this study and previous ones is that it presents a more optimistic outlook of biodiversity. Previous studies have estimated that species richness may be 50-95% lower on abandoned logging roads when compared to logged forests (see here, here, and here). As such, the relatively fast recovery of species richness shown by Kleinschroth and colleagues appears to be outside of the norm, and further similar studies will be needed to see whether the pattern of recovery shown in this paper is an outlier. So we can’t really give a solid answer to the question posed in the title of this post – sorry about that.

While results vary from study to study it is obvious that more efforts need to be made to reduce the number of logging roads, their initial impacts to forests, and to help them recover once they are abandoned. In order to reduce the number of roads, reduced-impact logging could be used. This method, which I have been accused of disliking in the past, seems to be very successful in reducing the number of roads in logging concessions where it has been used (see here for an example of this). This is done by producing a plan for road construction prior to any trees being cut, rather than the ad-hoc approach often taken in conventional logging. Reducing the impact of roads could be done by limiting their width. Finally, improving recovery could be done by planting seedlings/saplings on former logging roads, as well as reducing access to roads.

One suggestion that the authors made in their paper that I really like is to re-use logging roads when forests are re-logged. Given that logging typically occurs every 30 years, this would allow some time for recovery of biodiversity on the roads but clearing them would reduce the damage caused by their construction spreading to other areas of the forest.

*I admit it, I’ve been terrible at keeping up with my reading recently.

**John Healy and Fritz have written a nice summary of their paper on the website “The Conversation” which is well worth a read.

***Anecdotal, I know, but I have seen similar things on restored salt marshes in the UK where diggers have been used to breach sea walls. At least for the ones I remember, this resulted in reduced vegetation cover.

 

Are we in danger of underestimating biodiversity loss?

Almost all ecological research of human impacts on biodiversity looks at changes after they have happened. To do this, researchers usually compare a site where some kind of disturbance has happened to a nearby undisturbed site. This method is called space-for-time substitution. The assumption of this approach is that the only thing that differs between sites is this disturbance. However, this assumption is often incorrect. Sites may have had very different biodiversity before any disturbances, which can lead to under- or over-estimations of biodiversity changes as a result of human impacts. One result of this is that we aren’t really sure how tropical logging alters the composition of ecological communities. These problems are likely to be particularly acute when habitat fragmentation limits dispersal to some sites.

Up until recently there had been little work comparing how the results from space-for-time methods compare to methods that compare sites before and after disturbances. However, last week an elegantly designed study was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology which aimed to examine just this in the context of logging in Brazil. The paper aimed to compare space-for-time methods to before-after-control-impact (BACI) methods. Critically BACI studies measure biodiversity at sites at least once before the disturbance of interest takes place. Researchers then return to sites and remeasure them after the disturbance. Importantly both sites impacted by the disturbance and control sites are surveyed on both occasions. Using this method allows researchers to disentangle the effects of disturbances and any differences between sites prior to disturbance – a key advantage over space-for-time methods.

The paper by Filipe França and colleagues examined the differences in results obtained for space-for-time and BACI methods when looking at changes in dung beetle biodiversity in tropical logged forests in Brazil. To do this they surveyed 34 locations in a logging concession, 29 of which were subsequently logged at a variety of intensities. The intensity of logging (the number of trees/volume of wood removed per hectare) is a very important determinant of the impact of logging on biodiversity and carbon (see previous posts on this here and here). They then went back and re-surveyed these locations one year later. From the data collected, they calculated changes in species richness, community composition and total biomass of dung beetles.

Figure 1 – Differences between before-after-control-impact (BACI) approach and space-for-time substitution (SFT) for changes in dung beetle species richness, community composition, and biomass. For more details see Franca et al. (2016).

When comparing space-for-time and BACI the paper found that BACI characterised changes in biodiversity significantly better than space-for-time methods. Critically, space-for-time methods underestimated the relationship between logging intensity and biodiversity losses, with changes in species richness twice as severe as estimated by space-for-time (see Figure 1). BACI methods also consistently provided higher explanatory power and steeper slopes between logging intensity and biodiversity loss.

So what does this mean for how we do applied ecology? I think it is clear that we need to employ BACI methods more often in the future. However, BACI comes with logistical and financial constraints. Firstly, it is virtually impossible to predict where disturbances are going to happen before they occur. As a result, Franca and colleagues think that if we want to carry out more BACI research in the future, we need to develop closer ties with practitioners. This will involve building relationships with logging and oil palm companies, as well as agricultural businesses and property developers. This may make some researchers uncomfortable, but we need to do this if we are to provide robust evidence for decision makers. Secondly, BACI studies take longer to carry out, so we need to convince those that hold the purse strings that they are worth investing in.

BACI is clearly something we should be using more often but does this mean that space-for-time approach is useless? Should we even be using space-for-time methods at all? I’m not being hyperbolic just to get some attention- some have argued that we should stop using chronosequences altogether because ecological succession is unpredictable. After momentarily going into a bit a crisis about this when I read some papers on succession last year, I have come to a slightly different conclusion. Space-for-time substitution sometimes predicts temporal changes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. What we need is to work out when the use of space-for-time approaches are acceptable, and when it would be better to use temporal methods. Reviews have highlighted that as ecosystems increase in complexity space-for-time methods become less useful for monitoring changes in biodiversity. For example, large local species pools mean that post-disturbance colonisation may be very variable between sites. This problem is  compounded in fragmented landscapes where there are barriers to dispersal of seeds and animals. Every additional layer of complexity makes post-disturbance dynamics more and more difficult to predict. Ultimately, the best way to address this problem is through some kind of synthesis.

Working out when space-for-time approaches are useful and when they are not is not something we are going solve overnight. Before we can review the evidence, we need some evidence in the first place.  This is part of the reason why papers like the one by França and colleagues that I’ve discussed here are vitally important. So next time you think about designing a study see if you can assess how the results from temporal methods compare those from  space-for-time methods. The results might just take you by surprise.

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Filipe França & Hannah Griffiths have written a great post on the Journal of Applied Ecology blog going into more detail about the implications of their study. I strongly recommend you give it a look.

“Like walking through an open cemetery”

“I have been working in human-modified tropical forests for the past 14 years, but seeing these fires first hand was devastating,” wrote Erika responding to one of my questions “The smell of wet soil was gone and I could only smell smoke…even the usual cacophony of forest sounds disappeared…it was like walking through an open cemetery.”

Erika de Berengeur Cesar, an up and coming Brazilian forest researcher, works at Lancaster University. For last two months, she has been slogging away in the field collecting data for her team’s project on human-modified forests. But this year hasn’t gone to plan. This isn’t a case of bad planning though, as with so may projects – 7 of her 20 sites had burned in some of the most widespread fires in recent times. After seeing her tweeting about this, I thought “I need to write something about this. It feels important.” So we fired a few tweets and emails back and forth, with Erika fitting answering my questions between her days in the field. After I had waited impatiently for a couple of days, Erika messaged me:

“Sorry, trying not to work weekends…not going very well though…Today I just learned that 9 of my 20 plots have burned.” 2 more plots. Aside from the wider situation, this was the stuff of researcher’s nightmares.

Erika de Berengeur Cesar in one of her logged plots before it burned (top) and the same plot after recent fires (bottom). Photo courtesy of Erika.

Fires in Brazil reached record levels in 2015, with more than a quarter of a million separate fires recorded. However, these fires are not generally ‘natural’ – “Fires in the region always have a human ignition source.” Erika told me “They are used in slash-and-burn agriculture, to clear pastures of weeds and also to burn downed timber in newly deforested areas.” This year’s strong El Niño has caused drier conditions than normal making it “easier for agricultural fires to escape the targeted area and sweep through the forests.” Indonesia is facing a similar problem, where forests have been burned to clear space for new oil plantations, in what the Guardian’s George Monbiot  has described as the ‘greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century – so far.’

When I queried why it matters that the forest is burning, Erika was clear what the major issue is – the loss of unique biodiversity. “Every year over 100 new species are found in Amazonian forests. To see all this going up in smoke is a crime against humanity. It is a tragedy.”

“How are these fires likely to affect biodiversity?” I asked.

“The Amazon has not co-evolved with periodic fires…This means that Amazonian forests are not used to these events and…do not cope very well with it. In terms of plant communities, there is a sharp increase in the abundance of pioneer species, while high-wood density climax species disappear….Fires negatively affect…rare bird species, and the habitat specialists, such as the ant-following insectivores and the terrestrial gleaners. Overall, burned forests are significantly less diverse than their unburned counterparts.”

Amazonian forests that have burned repeatedly may eventually come to resemble more open savannahs and contain  very different species to relatively undisturbed old-growth forest.

But it’s not just biodiversity that is affected by these fires, but humans as well. In Indonesia there were evacuations of children by the navy, although some of the children, according to reports, still died from breathing difficulties . In Brazil the fires have “affected many of the local people…who reported a number of respiratory problems, such as dry cough, difficulties in breathing, and sore throats,” according to Erika. “People had to spend days building fire breaks to protect their land, instead of directly working on their crops.” People working on these farms already have a tough life as it is, without having to worry if their source of income will go up in smoke.

So what will happen to these forests in the future? Given time and, vitally, protection they can recover but Erika thinks this is unlikely “These burned forests may never recover. After the fire, several large trees die, creating a number of gaps in the forest canopy, through which more light and wind can reach the forest floor, making it drier and, as a consequence, more vulnerable to further fire events.”

The research Erika and her team are carrying out will help to answer the question of how burned forests recover but it is obvious that degraded forests, such as these, need to be seen as a greater conservation priority. More than 50% of the globe’s forests are degraded in one way or another. We cannot afford to only protect primary forests anymore.

Edit: I got an email from Erika a bit ago after I asked her what the best solution would be. I thought I should include it here:

“Funnily enough there are already quite a few good policies in place. The problem is that none is followed. For example, every year there is a ‘burning calendar’ establishing when farmers can use fire to burn their pastures or their croplands. During the peak of the dry season, the use of fire is forbidden. In 2015, given the extreme drought, some states even extended the prohibitive period. So all quite reasonable and good, right? The problem is that no one follows this rules and there is no law enforcement in place. So people carry business as usual and the forests carry on burning. To put in practice the existing laws would be the best solution.”

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If you want to read more about the situation in Brazil take a look at the excellent article Erika has written  for ‘The Conversation.’

There are also a pair of videos that Erika’s team have made documenting the fires that you can see here and here.

Beta-diversity – What is it good for?

A while ago I wrote a post asking whether everyone’s favourite measure of biodiversity, species richness, was useful. In it, I concluded that it is probably one of the bluntest, least informative measures of ecological communities we have and that we should try to use alternative metrics when possible. Recently, I started wondering about what other measures of biodiversity might be informative, and what they can be used for. And then a neat review of beta-diversity by James Jacob Socolar ( correction courtesy of James Gilroy on Twitter – thanks James!) and colleagues came out in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, so today I’ll focus on that, borrowing from some of their thoughts and hopefully adding some of my own along the way. In the future, at some point, I’ll write something about temporal changes in ecological communities at individual sites.

So, firstly what do I mean by beta-diversity? Beta-diversity broadly reflects the differences in community composition between sites.  Gamma diversity (regional diversity) is a product of both beta- and alpha-diversity (diversity at a single site). And there are lots* of different ways of measuring beta-diversity. The simplest metric for beta-diversity is termed ‘true beta-diversity’ and was defined by Whittaker in 1960 as:

This metric is perhaps the easiest to interpret, but it also needs a reliable estimate of gamma diversity, so may be difficult to use in practice. Using this method allows the relationship between alpha and gamma diversity to be investigated. Other measures can be based on dissimilarity matrices, identifying pairwise differences between sites. These metrics can then be used to look at drivers of these differences, such as the geographic distance between individual sites and environmental differences. However, dissimilarity matrix methods don’t allow the relationship between alpha and gamma diversity to be investigated. The above explanation probably explains the ubiquity of species richness as a metric in ecology – we can all (more-or-less) agree on what it means.

Changes in beta-diversity when humans alter natural landscapes can be unpredictable. When human disturbances are patchy, such as in the case of selective logging, beta diversity has been shown to be stable or increase due to an influx of generalist species in forest gaps.

Differences changes in tree community dissimilarity with increasing distance between sites in unlogged and logged forest. Note that logged forests show a more rapid rate of change, suggesting that logging results in more variable ecological communities. Figure modified from Berry et al 2008.

In contrast, when human land-use change results in the conversion of natural ecosystems to a relatively homogeneous system in which only a small subset of species can survive, beta-diversity tends to decrease. Examples of such drivers include agricultural conversion and urbanisation. However, even high intensity farming can result in an increase in beta-diversity particularly if species populations decrease leading to greater dissimilarity purely as a result of random processes.  In summary, the response of beta-diversity to anthropogenic change appears to be relatively idiosyncratic.

All of this is well and good, but what use is beta-diversity to practical conservation? At first inspection, this is not clear. The general perception of species richness is that more species = better**. Does higher beta-diversity = better? Well, no, not necessarily. Given that the aims of conservation vary from place to place, it is not surprising that how beta-diversity can be used also varies.

The most obvious use of beta-diversity is in spatial planning of protected areas. In landscapes which show a high spatial turnover of species, managers might favour the use numerous distinct reserves to capture this variation. However, in a landscape in which beta-diversity results from differents in species richness a single protected area might be favoured. Also, if a natural ecosystem is particularly distinct from other candidate sites it may be considered a priority for protection.

High beta-diversity can also result from dispersal limitation in a landscape. For example, secondary forests in fragmented landscapes plants with seeds dispersed by wind may colonise sites more readily than those dispersed by animals that may not cross non-forest areas. So in cases where beta-diversity amongst patches of a similar habitat in a fragmented landscape is high, this may point to the need for restoration to increase connectivity. Successful restoration may result in a decrease of beta-diversity as dispersal between patches increases. For example, Renata Pardini’s work has shown that the small mammal communities of more highly connected fragments of Atlantic forest are more similar to other patches than unconnected fragments. However, as far as I know, there is relatively little evidence empirical that restoration has similar effects.

In the paper I mentioned earlier, Jacob Socolar and colleagues suggest that beta-diversity may also be useful in informing the land-sharing vs land-sparing debate (which i have previously written about here, here an here). They argue that the use of beta-diversity as part of this debate may show that heterogenous landscapes that include agri-environment schemes, management of natural systems and high intensity agriculture are better at maintaining alpha- beta and gamma-diversity. Thus, the incorporation of metrics other than population sizes of species, the classic approach for such comparisons, may produce different conclusions to current studies, which largely suggest land-sparing as a favoured approach. As always with conservation, this depends on what you think we should try to protect. Should we focus on particular species? Or should we look attempt to conserve the processes that maintain coarse-scale diversity?

For me, the key point that the paper makes is that even though two recent high-profie studies recently suggested local-scale alpha-diversity is relatively constant***, global scale gamma-diversity is declining. This suggests that rare species are getting rarer and common species are increasing in abundance. If we can work out how and why beta-diversity responds to land-use changes we can better understand how to conserve gamma-diversity. However, before we do that we need to develop methods to upscale from alpha to gamma diversity and determine how different disturbances alter beta-diversity. Novel approaches offer the potential to solve this problem, but substantial testing is needed to determine how useful they are.

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*Patricia Koleff identified 24 metrics for use with presence-absence data and my  old CEH office mate Louise Barwell tested 29 different beta-diversity metrics that incorporated abundance data. Give both of these papers a read, they’re well worth your time.

**I don’t agree with this perception, I’m just extrapolating based on things I have heard from a few people. Deeply unscientific, I know.

***I saw Andrew Gonzalez present some work on the problems of these two studies at the 2015 British Ecological Society annual meeting and hope to post something when the paper comes out. I can’t say much, but it was fascinating stuff.

 

Can bad reviews be useful?

Everyone who publishes has had bad experiences with peer review. Reviewers that miss the point of what you are trying to say, or just hate your paper.

Case in point is some work on tropical logging we just got published in Forest Ecology and Management (see my blog post on it here and the paper here). I don’t have loads of experience with peer review, but now have 3 papers under my belt, one currently in review and I have reviewed about 10 papers in total. One of the reviews I got for this paper was the worst I have ever been given. I’m not going to go into detail, but here are some choice quotes:

Unfortunately, This analysis does not bring any new results in comparison with others recently published synthesis…

Finally the assess of the impact of logging on tree species richness presented in this study is meaningless…

The straight forward conclusion of the authors does not bring much to the debate already closed….

Now. The the first two comments may or may not be true. The thing that annoyed me more than anything was the last comment. Debate in science should never be closed. Scientists should not provide a united front when there is contradictory evidence. If you disagree with a study either (a) re-analyse the data of the paper you don’t like and write a letter to the editor, (b) produce another piece of work testing the same hypotheses or (c) be really radical and offer to write a joint paper with the authors of the work you disagree with. Blocking the paper from publication should not be an option.

The review I got is nothing compared to what some others have had to deal with, but it was annoying to have my path blocked by a reviewer who didn’t want my work published simply because my results didn’t fit their world view.

However, I have taken some positives lessons from this. Firstly, try to be aware of your own biases when reviewing someone else’s work. Secondly, be fair and be careful with what you say. If you don’t like a paper don’t go on and on about it, remember that someone spent months of their life on that work. We constructive and concise. Thirdly, when you are writing a paper don’t go out of your way to be controversial. I think some of our drafts of the paper came off as a bit combative and thus produced this reaction. Getting this reaction from a reviewer probably means that some readers will have similar reactions. However, don’t shy away from controversy either. If your results support a controversial hypothesis don’t let people who disagree with your view of things block you from publication.

Does reduced impact logging in tropical forests benefit carbon storage and species richness?

After a bit of a traumatic review process* we have just had a paper published in Forest Ecology and Management on the impacts of tropical selective logging on carbon storage and tree species richness. I’m really pleased that we finally got this work out there. If you want to give it a look you can get it here.

Selective logging is one of the most widespread drivers of tropical forest degradation. As I have said before around 400 million hectares of tropical forest are now used for logging – an area twice the size of Russia. Or one hundred and ninety two and a half times the size of Wales – if that’s your thing**.

High intensity logging can result in loss of animal species richness, but on the whole logging is seen as one of the least damaging human uses of tropical forests. That said, there are still concerns about its sustainability in the long-term. Poorly managed concessions commonly remove high timber volumes and do not leave enough time between logging cycles to allow forests to recover.

To improve the sustainability of the practice, reduced impact logging has been proposed. This method aims to reduce negative environmental impacts by cutting lianas and vines before logging, identifying which trees to cut and mapping them before logging starts, planning the roads to be built, and training staff in methods to reduce damage to the forest.  The first papers testing this method showed promising results, appearing to indicate that reduced impact logging causes lower carbon emissions when compared to conventional methods.

However, many papers that have  looked at the impacts of reduced impact logging failed to account for the volume of wood taken out of forests. Crucially, if this differs between reduced impact and conventionally logged sites this represents a hidden treatment, which if not accounted for can lead to faulty conclusions. Given that there are calls to pay people who use reduced impact logging as a means to reduce carbon emissions, we need good, solid science to support this policy.

So, we tried to solve the question of whether reduced impact logging still reduces negative effects on residual tree damage, aboveground biomass, and tree species richness using meta-analysis. We compiled data from all over the globe, all from previously published papers.

Locations of study sites where data we used was collected

Cutting to the chase, the results for reduced impact logging were mixed.

It seemed to reduce the damage to residual trees once logging volume was accounted for…

Reduced impact logging (blue) tended to cause less residual damage than conventional logging (red) once logging intensity was accounted for

… however, this did not obviously result in reduced biomass losses, and evidence of an effect on tree species richness was poor as well.

Effects of logging intensity on (a) aboveground biomass and (b) tree species richness. Reduced impact logging sites are blue points, and conventional sites are red. Note the relatively low intensity for most reduced impact logging sites.

Though residual damage to trees was reduced, this didn’t cause a  reduction in overall biomass loss. This may be the result of a few different factors. Firstly, residual damage is often to smaller trees so it is not necessarily that surprising that this had little effect on biomass. Secondly, we are really lacking enough data to be sure of the relationship between biomass changes and reduced impact logging. Nearly all of the data is from forests logged at low intensity so we cannot say if the slope of the relationship differs from that of conventional logging.

In the case of tree  species richness, the relative lack of change over a gradient of logging intensity is not too surprising. Newly logged areas richness is probably enhanced by fast growing pioneer species. However, richness is not a fantastically useful measure of biodiversity, in the future it would be much more useful to be able to say what type of species are being lost/gained not just the total number of species in a site (see the recent paper by Zuzana Burivalova and colleagues that tries to do this with bird species).

So what does this all mean? Does our study mean that reduced impact logging doesn’t work? The short answer is no. The long answer is a bit more complicated than that.

First we need to decide whether reduced impact logging is synonymous with low yield logging. If it is then that is fine, but we need to be upfront about this. Logging is after all mainly about timber production. However,some people have previously argued that reduced impact logging can reduce damage whilst maintaining yields. If this is true, it would represent a win-win situation.

If we decide that reduced impact logging isn’t synonymous with low yields then our research question needs to change from “Does reduced impact logging cause less damage than conventional logging?” to “How do the impacts of reduced impact and conventional logging vary over a gradient of timber yields?” Generally in ecology we focus too much on using categorical x variables in statistical tests, and this case is a great example of why this approach can hold back our science (see the fantastic post by Brian McGill on this subject here).

Previous studies show that animal species richness declines with increasing logging intensity and reduced impact logging causes lower losses of animal populations. As a result, a combination of reduced impact logging and reduced logging intensity may appear the best way to reduce carbon emissions and biodiversity loss from logging. However, reducing local yields may cause expansion of logging into previously unlogged areas. This mirrors the current land sharing/sparing debate on how to balance agricultural yields and food production. This debate is taking off regarding logging, and I am keen to see more work on tropical logging that acknowledges the importance of yields. As I said to someone at a conference recently, if we ignore the importance of logging yields why study logged forests?

However, to inform this debate we need more powerful tests of different logging methods than we could do in our paper. One possible source of data for this are studies where logging intensity has been calculated for each sample plot used. For most of the studies I used logging intensity was only available at the site level. Getting this detail would give more statistical power to our tests and provide a more solid evidence base for management of tropical forests. Large-collaborative projects such as the tropical managed forests observatory represent a great chance to answer this question in a more satisfactory manner.

*I will write more about this next week.None of the journals were to blame, just some very biased reviewers.

**If any US citizens want this calculating as relative to Rhode island, I did it. It’s 1273.8 Rhode islands.

Land-sparing/sharing in tropical logged forests

The dichotomy between land-sharing and land-sparing has been used a lot in studies on the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity to compare between relatively intense, highly productive agriculture that spares natural ecosystems from conversion and extensive, wildlife friendly agriculture with lower yields. The comparison between these two extreme ends of the land-use spectrum could potentially be applied to a whole host of problems relating to how we use land, such as urban planning, electricity production and timber production. While making changes to a manuscript I have been pondering the last of these problems a bit, in the context of tropical selective logging.

Our recent preprint, as well as in 2 other papers in the last year (here and here), showed how the impact of logging biodiversity and carbon storage vary over a gradient of logging intensity. Where large volumes of wood are extracted species richness of trees and animals are negatively impacted, animal populations are reduced as is carbon storage in tree biomass. This gradient of logging extraction represents potential different intensities at which tropical forests could be logged, extensive and low intensity, or high intensity and spatially concentrated. Though it is a topical subject (indeed there has been an NCEAS working group set up to deal with it and who have a flashy website here) there has been little empirical study of land-sparing/sharing in the context of tropical forests, with the only study published so far suggesting that land-sparing presents a better option for birds, dung beetles and ants in Borneo. Typically the gradient of timber extraction is calculated as the volume of trees felled per hectare. However, there are a number of problems that make this metric far from ideal.

Firstly, it tends to be calculated at very large scales, often covering an entire forest concession of hundreds of hectares. To get a better idea of the impact of logging across a gradient the scale of the measurement needs to be reduced so that variation between plots can be examined. Also, though the volume of trees felled obviously tells us quite a lot about the gradient of disturbance, it doesn’t actually tell us what we want to know – the yield. Just as crop yields are what is most important for a farmer the yield of timber from a logging concession is the primary concern of logging companies. Importantly the volume of trees harvested is not always very good at measuring this, since some logging operations are more efficient than others. For example, some trees that are felled but never actually make it to the sawmill. Such wastage is more likely in unplanned logging when lack of co-ordination can result in logs being left behind after being cut, and as a result the yields per hectare can be lower than measures of logging intensity might otherwise suggest.

Though there is currently some discussion of whether sharing or sparing are likely to result in better outcomes in tropical logged forests, the truth is that we currently don’t know much since we lack the sufficient evidence. In order to get this much needed evidence we need to make sure that when studies are designed to answer the land sparing/sharing question in tropical forests they use timber yield, not logging intensity as their gradient and species density as their response variable. Doing this will require closer collaboration with logging companies in order to get detailed information. Some people have cited the fact that logging appears to have relatively little effect on species richness at low intensities, however as I have discussed these relatively modest reductions in species richness may mask large changes in what species are present. As such species richness has no place in the debate about the configuration of landscapes in the context of tropical logging.

In addition to the populations of priority conservation species any future assessment of land-sharing/sparing must recognise that recovery times for carbon and timber tree populations are likely to be longer when logging intensities are high. Given this it seems likely that in order to reach as many goals as possible logging intensity should be high enough to reduce the area impacted but low enough to allow recovery within cutting periods – often around 30 years. Finding this balance will be difficult in the current data vacuum.

Impacts of selective logging of tropical forests on tree damage, biomass and tree species richness

A few days ago we put some of my thesis work on the impacts of tropical forest logging on the preprint server PeerJ. The work is currently in review elsewhere but I thought I should put up a blog post about our findings, even if they change a bit after the review. I am really pro the idea of making results available as soon as possible so that they can be read and cited. I have lost count of the number of times a piece of work I have seen presented at a conference and wanted to cite has taken 1-2 years to come out as a paper. In short I think preprints are the future, so feel free to read, comment on and critique ours over at Peerj (and you can even cite it if you like).

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A fifth of tropical forests have been logged in the recent past. Though logging is an important source of timber and jobs it also faces questions about its long-term sustainability particularly in its impacts on biodiversity and carbon. However, as I have written before, the results of studies on the impact of logging are very variable making generalisation difficult. Previous meta-analyses of the impacts of logging have indicated that biomass losses can be as high as 66% or as low as 4%, while tree species richness may be reduced by as much as 53% or show increases of up to 27%. However, none of these meta-analyses of the impacts of logging on tree biodiversity or biomass have explored the potential reasons for these differences. A recent study showed that differences in the impact of logging on animal species richness was explained by the variation in intensity of logging at sites, measured as the volume of wood removed per hectare. Interestingly this study showed that while species richness generally declined for amphibians, mammals and invertebrates with increasing intensity, bird species richness actually increased slightly.

Another recent piece of work by Jake Bicknell and colleagues has shown that a method called reduced impact logging (RIL), a technique which aims to reduce logging damage by altering extraction methods, reduces the negative effects of conventional logging techniques on animal population sizes. This is an important result as RIL has long been championed as a potential solution to the problems of logging sustainability and Jake’s work is the first to really show that it has positive effects across a number of sites.

So while two recent meta-analyses have indicated that logging intensity and method may have a profound influence on forest biodiversity no similar work has been done for trees, despite the fact that programmes that focus on conservation of carbon, such as REDD+, need this evidence to implement policy. So to fill this knowledge gap we performed a meta-analysis to determine what factors relating to logging intensity and method may cause variation in the impacts of logging on residual tree damage, aboveground biomass and tree species richness. In total we collected data from 62 studies across the tropics giving us 38, 43 and 9 data points for investigation of damage, biomass change and species richness change respectively. Promisingly we found that RIL seemed to reduce residual tree damage compared to conventional logging, with greatest differences to conventional logging found at low intensities. However, at higher intensities residual damage became more similar to that of conventional logging as suggested by previous work from Indonesia. However, the same wasn’t true of biomass. Though there was an apparent statistical difference in the slopes for RIL and conventionally logged forests the relatively low overlap in the intensities at which conventional and RIL are carried out means that slope estimation is not fantastic. As such it is not entirely clear whether, at the stand scale, RIL reduces biomass losses because of lower intensities or differences in practice as the two are confounded. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough information on species richness from forests logged using RIL to allow a comparison. However, the results were still interesting. There was a general decline in species richness with increasing logging intensity, but the plot hints that richness might increase at low intensities. Whether or not this is as a result of intermediate disturbance hypothesis type relationships is not a fight I want to get into, but this work does confirm that tree species richness is relatively insensitive to logging even at high intensities.

So our work suggests that the evidence for the positive effects of RIL is mixed, once we account for differences in logging intensity.  I am well aware that this piece of work might annoy a few people who think I have something against RIL. Those I have spoken to at conferences where I have presented often think that I am saying that RIL doesn’t work. I’m not. It just isn’t entirely clear what it’s effects are. Frankly it would be remarkable if RIL and conventional logging had similar impacts at the stand scale given the differences in the two practices. What I think we lack is enough evidence to say what is going on.

So what would be a constructive way to determine the differences in impact of RIL and conventional logging? One thing we think would improve evidence is the quantification of logging intensity at the plot scale. Currently studies often report logging intensities for the entire landscape where plots are located, meaning that the variation between plots is not accounted for. There is likely to be a big difference amongst plots and so the impacts are likely to differ as well. As far as I can tell only a few studies have done this. One good example is the work of Lucas Mazzei and colleagues who showed that plots that had been more intensively logged showed a slower recovery in biomass. Metrics such as the basal area of trees removed per hectare might be useful and relatively easy to collect at the plot scale.

The results of our study and those of Zuzana Burivalova suggest that logging intensity drives carbon and species loss while Jake Becknell’s work suggest that RIL is less damaging for animal populations. As such, current evidence suggests that RIL at relatively low intensities is likely to be the best way to reduce carbon and biodiversity loss in tropical logged forests. However, given the massive area of tropical forest already designated for logging reductions in local intensity, and thus yield, may encourage expansion into previously unlogged areas. Recent work indicates that high intensity logging over a smaller area (‘land sparing’) may have better outcomes for tropical forest species than low-intensity extensive timber extraction (‘land sharing’) in Borneo, though there is a need for similar studies in other areas of the tropics. Although reductions in logging intensity may reduce impact, the high demand for timber requires novel solutions that do not drastically reduce current yields but reduce impacts on forest ecosystems. Methods such as silvicultural thinning techniques to remove pioneer species may aid recovery of floral community composition, carbon and timber stocks but further work is needed to assess their effectiveness. Although RIL may also provide a solution, further evidence is required to verify this for carbon storage in the form of above-ground biomass. Analyses that take into account plot level variation in logging intensities using collaborative networks such as The Tropical managed Forests Observatory offer a potential solution to this.

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If you enjoyed this be sure to check out the preprint on peerJ or the posts ‘Logging intensity drives species richness loss’ and ‘How bad is logging for tropical biodiversity?’

Ecological degradation should be viewed as a GRADIENT not a TREATMENT

It’s a truth universally recognised that any good field ecologist is in search of a good control. Since most studies of human impact on ecosystems are ad hoc the history of control sites is often unknown and can lead to problems with interpretation, particularly in fields like invasion biology.

However it gets worse. Treatments in ecology are often not even really treatments.

In the lab most biologists can strictly control what each treatment constitutes (damn them) but in the field this is often not possible. As such there can be important differences in the treatment we are trying to characterise. This problem was already noted more than two decades ago by Michael Huston who stated that: “When an experimental manipulation has multiple components, but only one of them is identified as the experimental treatment, erroneous conclusions about cause and effect relationships are likely because the actual cause of any observed response may be ignored in the interpretation of the experimental results.”

Some work I have been doing during my thesis made me realise that this problem is actually still extremely common in certain ecological disciplines. I’ve noticed that work on logged forests and invasive species seem to be particularly prone to this (but I am certain that there are many other fields in which this regularly happens).

In studies of logging in tropical forest it is common to make a statistical comparison between logged and unlogged forests. However, not all logged plots are the same and there tends to be a very large variation in logging damage even in individual concessions. Despite this logging studies often analyse changes in forest characteristics using t-tests and lump together all logged forests as if they were the same. Doing this ignores lots of interesting and important variation that could be vital to management of tropical forests.

Similarly in studies of invasive plant species comparisons are commonly made between uninvaded and invaded ecosystems. However, again there is usually lots of variation regarding the degree  of invasion within individual sites. There has been lots written on different hypotheses regarding the impact of invasive species, one of which is that the impact is directly linked to the abundance/biomass of species. Simply by making comparisons between invaded and uninvaded ecosystems will not answer this question, we need to look at how impact varies with abundance. Addressing this question may give us some evidence on the degree to which invasive species are drivers or passengers of degradation – one of the most contentious questions in invasion biology.

The stupid thing is that these problems could be fixed relatively easily if we viewed these treatments as gradients of change. This allows a more nuanced interpretation of the potential impacts of humans on ecosystems changing the question from “Does impact x cause a change in y?” to “How does variable y change as impact x changes?” (Which Brian McGill wrote on over at Dynamic Ecology a while back).  This question is infinitely more interesting and more informative if we want ecology as a field to get better at prediction. Very few human impacts can truly be seen as a treatment  so we should stop treating them as if they were.

Logging intensity drives species richness loss

An area bigger than the entire Indian landmass is now used for timber production in the tropics. This logging is largely selective and leads to degradation with loss of specialist species and ecosystem services like carbon storage. However, many have also argued that these forests should be considered a priority for protection since they are at danger of conversion to other land-uses such as agriculture. In addition the impact of logging on tropical forest biodiversity appears to be less negative than other human impacts.

However, simply saying that logging is a less damaging option when compared to other way in which humans exploit forests misses a lot of what is going on. Logging operations differ massively from place to place in terms of the volume of trees cut for timber, the area affected by logging, the distance between logged and unlogged areas, I could go on… All of these differences have the potential to influence the the effect of logging on biodiversity.