We combined ethnographic investigations with repeated ecological transect surveys in the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve (RDS), Central African Republic, to elucidate consequences of intensifying mixed use of forests. We devised a framework for transvaluation of wildlife species, which means the valuing of species on the basis of their ecological, economic, and symbolic roles in human lives....

Oil palm expansion threatens biodiverse ecosystems across the tropics. However, palm oil is a widely used and profitable crop, so identifying strategies that mitigate the impact of oil palm expansion on biodiversity is important. Riparian reserves (strips of forest along rivers) are protected in many countries for hydrological reasons and also support species that would not otherwise persist in...

Local communities are assembled from larger-scale species pools via dispersal, environmental filtering, biotic interactions, and local stochastic demographic processes. The relative importance, scaling and interplay of these assembly processes can be elucidated by comparing local communities to variously circumscribed species pools. Here we present the first study applying this approach to fore...

One of the primary challenges facing ecotourism management is to establish a profitable and ecologically sustainable industry, while simultaneously achieving a satisfying experience for visitors and raising standards of living in the host community. This paper analyses the management practices and challenges faced by two ecotourism attractions on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, namely ...

Biosphere reserves have been studied around the world, but methods to elicit community's values, worldviews and perceptions are missing. A greater understanding of these can help avoid tension and improve successful management. This paper used a mixed-methods survey to elicit local community's environmental values, ecological world views and perceptions of the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Bio...

Question: Can lichen communities be used to assess shortand long-term factors affecting seral quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) communities at the landscape scale? Location: Bear River Range, within the Rocky Mountains, in northern Utah and southern Idaho, USA. Method: Forty-seven randomly selected mid-elevation aspen stands were sampled for lichens and stand conditions. Plots were characteri...

during recent years, a series of climate projections provided for surface temperature increase and precipitation changes over the next century in various time slices. national institutes are using downscaling projections for more precise results. in this research study, various climate change projections in global, continental, regional and local scales have been examined in special forest ecos...

Poverty, hunger and demand for agricultural land have driven local communities to overexploit forest resources throughout Ethiopia. Forests surrounding the township of Humbo were largely destroyed by the late 1960s. In 2004, World Vision Australia and World Vision Ethiopia identified forestry-based carbon sequestration as a potential means to stimulate community development while engaging in en...

Despite the important ecosystem role played by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), little is known about spatial and temporal variation in soil AMF communities. We used pyrosequencing to characterise AMF communities in soil samples (n = 44) from a natural forest ecosystem. Fungal taxa were identified by BLAST matching of reads against the MaarjAM database of AMF SSU rRNA gene diversity. Sub-sam...