This week, Dr Nick Deere from DICE will be giving a talk on “Informing tropical mammal conservation in human-modified landscapes using remote technologies and hierarchical modelling.”
As usual we will meet at 4pm on Friday on Microsoft Teams.
Abstract: “The aggressive expansion of anthropogenic activities is placing increasing pressure on global biodiversity. These impacts are particularly pronounced in tropical forest ecosystems that support exceptional concentrations of biodiversity but have been subjected to the highest rates of habitat loss. Here conservation efforts are hindered by a paucity of information on species ecology and a failure of policy instruments to reconcile multiple stressors of land-use change. While the protected area network remains central to global conservation efforts, there is a general consensus that protectionist strategies alone will be insufficient to mitigate the magnitude of threats facing biodiversity in vulnerable regions. Conservationists must pursue new paradigms that recognise the fundamental role of human-modified landscapes, particularly logged forests and agricultural concessions, which occupy vast swathes of land across the tropics. Capitalising on environmental policies that enhance biodiversity values in production landscapes is thus central to the global conservation agenda.
During this seminar I will demonstrate how modern advances in remote technologies and statistical methods can be practically applied to provide novel insights into species ecology in tropical habitats and develop robust, evidence-based policy options for vulnerable biodiversity in human-modified landscapes. To this end, I will draw on insights from Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, a region prone to pervasive habitat modification due to the proliferation of selective logging and commodity agriculture. Throughout, applications will focus on tropical mammals as they are particularly sensitive to land-use change, occupy key trophic positions in tropical forest ecosystems and are frequently prioritised by conservation interventions.”