Forest Ecosystem ManagementForests do not occur in isolation from other elements in the landscape. Many plant and animal species that occupy forests also make their homes in surrounding savannas, wetlands and land-use mosaics. The development of options for sustainable forest management must take into account the many factors that determine the behaviour of forest elements within the surrounding landscape. Forest Ecosystem Management (FEM) seeks improved understanding of these factors, including the interactions between the socio-economic and biophysical variables. Understanding the very complex interactions between people and forests is vital if effective management and policy options are to be developed. FEM is therefore concerned with integrating knowledge about representative areas of the tropics, to predict the outcomes of different management options. This year saw the development of spatially referenced databases in eco-regional transects located in the western Amazon, Indonesia (Sumatra and East Kalimantan) and Cameroon in humid west tropical Africa. The most intensive of these is in the Jambi Province of Central Sumatra. There, the broad-ranging transect covers about 2000 square kilometres, ranging from montane forest at about 3800 metres above sea level to widespread, coastal wetlands that include rainforest on peatlands as well as tidal mangroves. The people who occupy the area range from nomadic forest dwellers (Kubu) to urban industrialists. The Jambi transect offers an enormous variety of socio-economic and biophysical characteristics relevant to much of the world's tropical forested lands. Data recorded so far include topography, climate, soils, geology, stream and road networks, land-tenure patterns, logging concession and national park boundaries, demographic and other socio-economic data. CIFOR's growing multi-variate database can support a wide range of multi-disciplinary research interests from modelling forest ecosystem behaviour to examining linkages between forests and climate. The Jambi benchmark site was the focus this year for an intensive ground-truthing operation involving remotely sensed radar (the INDREX project). For that study, a team of about thirty field staff from Indonesia and overseas were trained in rapid survey methods. These methods were developed by CIFOR, to locate and record vegetation data in a way that may identify useful correlates between plant-based characteristics and cloud-piercing, radar imagery. The study will help improve the capacity of managers and planners to evaluate natural resources using more cost-effective imagery than that obtained via LANDSAT and SPOT satellite techniques that are often hampered by cloud layers. Geo-referenced data for the other FEM benchmark sites in East Kalimantan, the western Amazon basin and Cameroon are progressing. In association with the ICRAF Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) project, FEM will co-develop the databases needed to construct geographic information systems and testable models of options for management of forests and agroforests. To improve methods of forest assessment, CIFOR has been testing use of a minimum set of plant functional attributes (PFAs) to make ecological comparisons between sites, where physical, environmental and adaptive responses may be similar but where the plant species differ. In an intensive biodiversity baseline study in two logging concessions in the Kerinci Seblat National Park buffer zone, an international team recorded data on birds, small and large mammals, insects and vascular plant species as a way of identifying logging impacts. Preliminary analyses of the data indicate this area of central Sumatra may be
outstandingly rich in biodiversity of certain insect and plant taxa. When compared with
plant data collected using the same techniques in the western Amazon basin, the upland
forest sites recorded at least twice the number of vascular plant species (see box). This
is the highest level of species richness so far recorded anywhere in the world using these
survey techniques. An analysis of global data has also shown a surprisingly close
correlation between the total number of plant species per plot and the total number of
unique plant functional types (PFTs). Forest managers and biodiversity surveyors in many
tropical forests may be able to reliably estimate species richness from readily recordable
PFTs using a simple statistical formula. CIFOR Project Team: |