Assessment of the progress of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the safeguarding of ecosystems from the perverse negative impacts caused by Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) requires the development of spatiotemporally robust and sensitive indicators of biodiversity and ecosystem health. Recently, it has been proposed that tree-community composition based on count-plot surveys could serve as a robust, sensitive, and cost-effective indicator for forest intactness in Bornean logged-over rain forests.

Land cover and forest mapping supports decision makers in the course of making informed decisions for implementation of sustainable conservation and management plans of the forest resources and environmental monitoring. This research examines the value of integrating of ALOS PALSAR and Landsat data for improved forest and land cover mapping in Northern Tanzania.

The rapid economic growth in Lao PDR over the last two decades has been driven by the natural resource sectors and commercialization in the agriculture sector. Rural landscapes are being transformed over the past decade from land use mosaics of subsistence and smallholder farms to large-scale plantations dominated by a few commercial crops.

The accelerated development of energy resources around the world has substantially increased forest change related to oil and gas activities. In some cases, oil and gas activities are the primary catalyst of land-use change in forested landscapes. We discuss the challenges associated with characterizing ecological change related to energy resource development using North America as an exemplar. We synthesize the major impacts of energy development to forested ecosystems and offer new perspectives on how to detect and monitor anthropogenic disturbance during the Anthropocene.

Smallholder teak (Tectona grandis) plantations have been identified as a potentially valuable component of upland farming systems in northern Laos that can contribute to a “livelihood transition” from subsistence-oriented swidden agriculture to a more commercially-oriented farming system, thereby bringing about a “forest transition” at the landscape scale. In recent years, teak smallholdings have become increasingly prominent in the province of Luang Prabang, especially in villages close to Luang Prabang City.

The aim of this paper is to explore possible links between forest cover change and characteristics of social-ecological systems at sub-national scale based mainly on census data. We assessed relationships between population density, poverty, ethnicity, accessibility and forest cover change during the last decade for four regions of Bolivia and the Lao PDR, combining a parcel-based with a cell-based approach.

Various international bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have proposed guidelines for safeguarding biodiversity. Nevertheless, quantitative criteria for safeguarding biodiversity should first be established to measure the attainment of biodiversity conservation if biodiversity is to be safeguarded effectively. We conducted research on the impact of logging on biodiversity of dung beetles and small mammals in a production forest in Temengor Forest Reserve, Perak, Malaysia.

This paper analyzes and quantifies the land use/land cover changes of the main forest and semi-natural landscape types in Sicily between 1955 and 2012. We analyzed seven representative forest and shrubland landscapes in Sicily. These study areas were chosen for their importance in the Sicilian forest panorama. We carried out a diachronic survey on historical and current aerial photos; all the aerial images used to survey the land use/land cover changes were digitalized and georeferenced in the UTM WGS84 system.

The objectives of this study are to: (1) evaluate accuracy of tree height measurements of manual stereo viewing on a computer display using digital aerial photographs compared with airborne LiDAR height measurements; and (2) develop an empirical model to estimate stand-level aboveground biomass with variables derived from manual stereo viewing on the computer display in a Cambodian tropical seasonal forest. We evaluate observation error of tree height measured from the manual stereo viewing, based on field measurements.

Future forest cover changes were simulated under the business-as-usual (BAU), pessimistic and optimistic scenarios using the Markov-cellular automata (MCA) model in Pakxeng district, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). The Markov chain analysis was used to compute transition probabilities from satellite-derived forest cover maps (1993, 1996, 2000 and 2004), while the “weights of evidence” procedure was used to generate transition potential (suitability) maps.

Os assentamentos de reforma agrária têm assumido um papel de destaque em relação ao desmatamento da Amazônia nos últimos cinco anos. Atualmente cerca de 8% do território dos estados amazônicos (41,8 milhões de hectares) encontra-se destinado aos 3.589 assentamentos de reforma agrária.

A Amazônia brasileira, que detém grande parte da maior floresta tropical do mundo, está ameaçada pela exploração descontrolada de seus recursos naturais. Mais de 750.000 km² de florestas já foram desmatados por atividades econômicas em escala industrial como a produção agropecuária, mineração, exploração ilegal de madeira e grandes projetos de infraestrutura, especialmente usinas hidrelétricas –, colocando em risco a biodiversidade incomparável da região, forçando o deslocamento de comunidades tradicionais e povos indígenas de suas terras e agravando as mudanças do clima global.