Anderson, Jake A;
McClean, Colin J;
Sim, Sarah;
Pettorelli, Nathalie;
Jelling, Ahmad;
Tangah, Joseph;
Hill, Jane K;
(2022)
Weak edge effects on trees in Bornean rainforest remnants bordering oil palm.
Biotropica
, 54
(4)
pp. 921-932.
10.1111/btp.13115.
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Abstract
Many tropical forests are dominated by edge habitat, with consequences for forest structure, carbon stocks, and biodiversity. However, edge effects are highly variable and context-dependent, and are poorly quantified in oil palm landscapes. We studied edge effects in 10 lowland rainforest remnants bordering mature oil palm plantations on Borneo, by surveying 0.2 ha plots along transects running perpendicular to the forest edge (ten 1.6 km transects, 5-6 plots per transect; 57 plots in total). We examined how edge proximity affected plot-level forest structure (canopy cover, number and size of stems ≥10 cm diameter), aboveground carbon stocks, microclimate (air temperature and light intensity), and tree community composition and richness. The largest trees were significantly smaller (up to 21% reduced diameter) in plots near edges, and plot-level carbon was up to 30% lower (model-fitted average = 64.7 Mg ha−1 at 50 m from the edge, versus 92.3 Mg ha−1 at 1600 m), with the strongest effects within 300m of edges. However, these significant effects of edge proximity were relatively small in the context of existing variation, with distance-from-edge explaining <13% of the total variability in maximum tree size or carbon. In addition, there were generally no effects of edge proximity on any other component of forest structure, composition or diversity, and only a weak effect on microclimate. We conclude that limited edge effects in this system may reflect low structural contrast between forest and mature oil palm, and limited invasion of pioneer trees from plantations, which diminished edge influence in highly heterogeneous forest remnants. Abstract in Malay is available with online material.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Weak edge effects on trees in Bornean rainforest remnants bordering oil palm |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/btp.13115 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.13115 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Biotropica published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Ecology, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, agricultural expansion, biodiversity, carbon storage, forest fragmentation, forest structure, microclimate, tropical trees, ATLANTIC FOREST, COMMUNITY COMPOSITION, VEGETATION STRUCTURE, ABOVEGROUND BIOMASS, SEED DISPERSAL, WOOD DENSITY, FRAGMENTATION, LANDSCAPE, CONSERVATION, BIODIVERSITY |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10164034 |
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