Riparian buffers act as microclimatic refugia in oil palm landscapes

Williamson, Joseph R.; Slade, Eleanor M.; Luke, Sarah H.; Swinfield, Tom; Chung, Arthur Y. C.; Coomes, David A.; Heroin, Herry; Jucker, Tommaso; Lewis, Owen T.; Vairappan, Charles Santhanaraju; Rossiter, Stephen J.; Struebig, Matthew J.

doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13784

Cited by 35 publications

(39 citation statements)

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“…Riparian buffer forest was composed of remnant oldgrowth and secondary forest. The forest within each site had tall trees (some >40 m), high canopy cover and similar mean riparian forest widths (48, 58 and 41 m in RR03, RR10 and RR18 respectively; Gray et al, 2019b;Williamson et al, 2020). Minor variations were inevitably found among sites in the precise configuration of landscape elements (Figure 1b-d).…”

Section: Study Sitesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Movement of forest‐dependent dung beetles through riparian buffers in Bornean oil palm plantations

Gray

Rodríguez

Lewis

et al. 2021

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Fragmentation of tropical forests is increasing globally, with negative impacts for biodiversity. In Southeast Asia, expansion of oil palm agriculture has caused widespread deforestation, forest degradation and fragmentation.2. Persistence of forest-dependent species within these fragmented landscapes is likely to depend on the capacity of individuals to move between forest patches. In oil palm landscapes, riparian buffers along streams and rivers are potential movement corridors, but their use by moving animals is poorly studied.3. We examined how six dung beetle species traversed riparian buffers connected to a continuous forest reserve area within an oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. We used a mark-release-recapture study and a new Bayesian Joint Species Movement Modelling (JSMM) approach, extended to a continuous capture process model. 4. Dung beetle species were fairly generalist in their habitat use, but two species showed a statistically supported preference for riparian buffer forest over oil palm, and one species showed a strong preference for forest reserve over riparian buffer, indicating the importance of forested areas within oil palm landscapes for some species. 5. A land-use change simulation indicated that the loss of riparian buffers in oil palm will result in reduced movement by forest-dependent species.6. Synthesis and applications. Our results provide evidence for the use of riparian buffers in oil palm plantations for forest-dependent dung beetle species, strengthening the case for their retention, restoration and re-establishment. Furthermore, | 239

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Section: Study Sitesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Movement of forest‐dependent dung beetles through riparian buffers in Bornean oil palm plantations

Gray

Rodríguez

Lewis

et al. 2021

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…Our results suggest buffers have to be much wider than presently required -20 metres on each side -in order to ensure that forest in the interior of the riparian strip continue to grow during droughts. If designed and protected appropriately, riparian reserves in oil palm estates support regrowth with potentially positive consequences for the global carbon cycle 62 and for ecosystem function 63 . Our results also demonstrate that small, fragmented patches of regenerating logged forests left on hilltops will be slow to recover due to lower water availability, particularly as ENSO events are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change 13,14 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recovery of logged forest fragments in a human-modified tropical landscape during the 2015-16 El Niño

et al. 2021

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The past 40 years in Southeast Asia have seen about 50% of lowland rainforests converted to oil palm and other plantations, and much of the remaining forest heavily logged. Little is known about how fragmentation influences recovery and whether climate change will hamper restoration. Here, we use repeat airborne LiDAR surveys spanning the hot and dry 2015-16 El Niño Southern Oscillation event to measure canopy height growth across 3,300 ha of regenerating tropical forests spanning a logging intensity gradient in Malaysian Borneo. We show that the drought led to increased leaf shedding and branch fall. Short forest, regenerating after heavy logging, continued to grow despite higher evaporative demand, except when it was located close to oil palm plantations. Edge effects from the plantations extended over 300 metres into the forests. Forest growth on hilltops and slopes was particularly impacted by the combination of fragmentation and drought, but even riparian forests located within 40 m of oil palm plantations lost canopy height during the drought. Our results suggest that small patches of logged forest within plantation landscapes will be slow to recover, particularly as ENSO events are becoming more frequent.

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“…Often, the prevailing policies and conservation strategies have favored large, connected "natural" areas, while considering fragments of natural habitat as of little or no value (IUCN, 1980;Sodhi et al, 2010). Indeed, small forest fragments are sensitive to microclimatic, anthropogenic and biological edge effects, support only a small proportion of the biodiversity of the original forest mostly consisting of invasive and generalist species that are of less conservation concern, and their value for conservation is often disregarded (Haddad et al, 2015;Pfeifer et al, 2017;Williamson et al, 2020). However, the importance of habitat heterogeneity and small habitat patches for biodiversity conservation and species dispersal is increasingly recognized (Azhar et al, 2015;Wintle et al, 2019;Arroyo-Rodriguez et al, 2020;Watling and Fang, 2020), especially for wide-ranging or volant species (Beca et al, 2017;Melo et al, 2017;Scriven et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Importance of Small Forest Fragments in Agricultural Landscapes for Maintaining Orangutan Metapopulations

Ancrenaz

Nardiyono²,

Jopony

et al. 2021

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Historically, orangutans (Pongo spp.) lived in large contiguous areas of intact rainforest. Today, they are also found in highly modified and fragmented landscapes dominated by oil palm or industrial timber plantations; a situation that calls for new conservation approaches. Here we report signs of orangutan presence in more than 120 small forest fragments of <500 ha in size and isolated in extensive oil palm plantations across Borneo. We confirmed the long-term presence of adult resident females with dependent young in 42% of the fragments assessed by ground survey (n = 50), and the regular sightings of males traveling across the landscape. We argue that orangutans using and living in small isolated forest patches play an essential part in the metapopulation by maintaining gene flow among larger sub-populations distributed across multiple-use landscapes. In some cases, translocations may be necessary when the animals are in imminent danger of being killed and have no other refuge. However, the impacts of removing animals from spatially dispersed metapopulations could inadvertently decrease critical metapopulation functionality necessary for long-term viability. It is clear that orangutans need natural forest to survive. However, our findings show that forest fragments within agricultural landscapes can also complement conservation areas if they are well-distributed, properly connected and managed, and if orangutan killing is prevented. Efforts to better understand the dynamics and the functionality of an orangutan metapopulation in forest-farmland landscape mosaics characteristic of the Anthropocene are urgently needed to design more efficient conservation strategies for the species across its range.

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Riparian buffers act as microclimatic refugia in oil palm landscapes

Abstract: 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.

Cited by 35 publications

References 77 publications

Movement of forest‐dependent dung beetles through riparian buffers in Bornean oil palm plantations

Movement of forest‐dependent dung beetles through riparian buffers in Bornean oil palm plantations

Recovery of logged forest fragments in a human-modified tropical landscape during the 2015-16 El Niño

Importance of Small Forest Fragments in Agricultural Landscapes for Maintaining Orangutan Metapopulations

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