Carbon-rich tropical forests, which are often among the least-disturbed habitats, seem to be ideal bastions for sensitive and threatened animals, particularly compared to lower-carbon areas like timber and oil palm plantations. But, until recently, data-driven conclusions connecting high levels of both carbon and biodiversity have been elusive.
“Scientists have been trying to link carbon with biodiversity for a number of years, but with variable success,” says Nick Deere, currently studying for his PhD at DICE. Recent research by Nick and his colleagues revealed that high-carbon tropical forests do support more biodiversity than those with less carbon, bolstering the case for the use of carbon assessments to identify forests important for conservation on a number of fronts. The team, also comprising of Matt Struebig and Zoe Davies, published their findings Nov. 6 in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
The team chose the patchwork of forests and plantations that make up the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems, or SAFE, project area in southern Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo. Critical to demonstrating the relationship between carbon and biodiversity levels was the researchers’ use of high-resolution satellite data to pinpoint areas with the most carbon. They also used camera traps to record the number of species present in different habitats. In places like Sabah, where humans have altered huge parts of the landscape, a relatively pristine remnant of forest might be adjacent to farms or oil palm plantations. When averaged over a large area, Deere said, “the carbon value of that fragment is going to be dragged down by the agricultural areas around it.”
Similarly, studies looking at biodiversity on broader scales than the data that’s collected with camera trapping often miss the nuanced impacts that forest quality can have on the diversity of species in an area. For example, the presence of animals that can survive in oil palm plantations might give the mistaken impression that an area still supports a wide range of species. In reality, these “disturbance-tolerant generalist species … obscure the trend,” he said.
Deere and his team paired both high- and low-resolution carbon data with camera trap captures from both forests and oil palm plantations. While the low-resolution data didn’t bear out a relationship, the finer-scale data did reveal that high-carbon areas support more species of medium and large mammals threatened with extinction.