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Deforestation and drought are among the greatest environmental pressures on the Amazon rainforest, possibly destabilizing the forest-climate system. Deforestation in the Amazon reduces rainfall regionally, while this deforestation itself has been reported to be facilitated by droughts. Here we quantify the interactions between drought and deforestation spatially across the Amazon during the early 21st century. First, we relate observed fluctuations in deforestation rates to dry-season intensity; second, we determine the effect of conversion of forest to cropland on evapotranspiration; and third, we simulate the subsequent downwind reductions in rainfall due to decreased atmospheric water input. We find large variability in the response of deforestation to dry-season intensity, with a significant but small average increase in deforestation rates with a more intense dry season: with every mm of water deficit, deforestation tends to increase by 0.13% per year. Deforestation, in turn, has caused an estimated 4% of the recent observed drying, with the south-western part of the Amazon being most strongly affected. Combining both effects, we quantify a reinforcing drought-deforestation feedback that is currently small, but becomes gradually stronger with cumulative deforestation. Our results suggest that global climate change, not deforestation, is the main driver of recent drying in the Amazon. However, a feedback between drought and deforestation implies that increases in either of them will impede efforts to curb both.

A major global effort to enable cost-effective natural regeneration is needed to achieve ambitious forest and landscape restoration goals. Natural forest regeneration can potentially play a major role in large-scale landscape restoration in tropical regions. Here, we focus on the conditions that favor natural regeneration within tropical forest landscapes. We illustrate cases where large-scale natural regeneration followed forest clearing and non-forest land use, and describe the social and ecological factors that drove these local forest transitions. The self-organizing processes that create naturally regenerating forests and natural regeneration in planted forests promote local genetic adaptation, foster native species with known traditional uses, create spatial and temporal heterogeneity, and sustain local biodiversity and biotic interactions. These features confer greater ecosystem resilience in the face of future shocks and disturbances. We discuss economic, social, and legal issues that challenge natural regeneration in tropical landscapes. We conclude by suggesting ways to enable natural regeneration to become an effective tool for implementing large-scale forest and landscape restoration. Major research and policy priorities include: identifying and modeling the ecological and economic conditions where natural regeneration is a viable and favorable land-use option, developing monitoring protocols for natural regeneration that can be carried out by local communities, and developing enabling incentives, governance structures, and regulatory conditions that promote the stewardship of naturally regenerating forests. Aligning restoration goals and practices with natural regeneration can achieve the best possible outcome for achieving multiple social and environmental benefits at minimal cost.

Market and public policies govern deforestation trends and patterns globally. Here I show that in the Brazilian Amazon, the largest tropical forest in the world, the size of deforestation polygons - the individual portions of cleared forest patches - has significantly increased in response to the current environmental governance. The average size of deforestation polygons in the current government is 61% greater than in the 10 previous years when environmental policies and programs were maintained. As a result, very large polygons (> 100 ha) are now dominating deforestation, suggesting a remarkable change in deforestation patterns and a new wave of destruction of the Amazon forest. To control increasing deforestation trends and changing patterns, command and control policies need to be strengthened along with interventions in the supply chain of Amazon commodities and sustainable development incentives, ensuring a transition to an environmentally sustainable economy.

Rapid warming and human exploitation threaten boreal forests. Understanding links among vegetation, climate, and people in this vast biome requires highly resolved long‐term records that integrate regional inputs. We developed an 850‐year pollen‐based record of supraregional vegetation change using a southern Greenland ice core and atmospheric modeling that identified the boreal and mixed‐conifer forests of eastern Canada as the dominant pollen source regions. Conifer pollen increased ∼1400 CE at the onset of the cooler and drier Little Ice Age. A subsequent decline began ∼1650 CE and a statistically significant pollen change after 1760 CE suggests ecological consequences of the Little Ice Age cooling and initial human exploitation that persisted until recent decades. These supraregional changes are broadly consistent with local records and demonstrate intensification of human impacts on northern forests, suggesting a shift from a climate‐modulated to an increasingly human‐controlled system during recent centuries. Plain Language Summary Understanding the consequences of climate warming and human exploitation for northern forests requires long‐term regional records of this sparsely populated region. We present a first 850‐year vegetation record from a low‐elevation ice core in Southern Greenland. The ice core integrates pollen from Eastern Canadian forests and other boreal forests, providing temporal precision and regional coverage not available from previous paleoecological investigations. We show that climate change drove changes in the abundances of coniferous species during the Little Ice Age. Subsequent warming coincided with the onset of timber exploitation that brought a shift from a climate‐controlled to an increasingly human‐controlled system. Current warming trends likely will further alter vegetation distribution, productivity, and disturbance regimes of northern forests, but they will be moderated by the legacy of human impacts. Key Points Atmospheric model FLEXPART identifies boreal and mixed‐conifer forests in Canada as pollen source area for Southern Greenland ice core Pollen in Greenland ice track conifer pollen increases ∼1400 CE at the onset of the cooler and drier Little Ice Age Conifer pollen declines ∼1650 CE coincident with cold LIA climate and initial commercial forest exploitation

Swidden cultivation can contribute to deforestation and land degradation, which can subsequently result in a number of serious environmental problems. This paper examines the economic and social potential of agroforestry systems and the barriers to their widespread adoption, as a land use alternative to swidden cultivation, which may potentially help protect local forest. The Gunung Salak valley in West Java, Indonesia is presented as a case study. Based on farmers’ and experts’ assessment, costs and benefits have been estimated, which show that the two investigated agroforestry systems have higher net present value and benefit-cost ratio (B/C) than the two swidden cultivation systems. Tree ownership also creates more permanent rights to farmland and is prestigious in the community. Agroforestry products (fruit, vegetables etc.) have high monetary value and help strengthen social cohesion when shared with neighbors. However, farmers are reluctant to implement agroforestry. Stated reasons are related to both culture and capacity. Farmers practicing agroforestry are less involved in forest clearing and forest products collection than swidden farmers indicating that it may contribute positively to conservation of local forests. Increasing the adoption of agroforestry farming in the study area will require support to overcome capacity constraints.

Global climate change may affect the upper elevational limits of distribution of montane organisms, especially if those limits are set directly by temperature. Oviparous (egg-laying) reptiles are constrained in this way because of their nesting requirements. In many areas, deforestation has already subjected these animals to small-scale \"climate change.\" Clearing for power lines (hydrocuts) increases solar radiation to potential nest sites, and hence enables these animals to penetrate higher into montane areas than would otherwise be possible. Such small-scale anthropogenic \"warming\" may offer a useful model system to explore consequences of broader climate change on the distribution and biology of montane organisms. We quantified thermal effects of a hydrocut in montane eucalypt forest in the Brindabella Range of southeastern Australia. The reduced canopy cover, increased duration of sunlight exposure, and higher levels of incident radiation in cleared areas substantially modified thermal regimes in potential nest sites. Orientation and exposure were the most important determinants of nest temperature and predicted the distribution of natural nests. Such cleared corridors (for roads, power lines, ski runs, etc.) may not only extend the upper elevational limit for oviparous reptiles, but may also modify the genetic structure and demography of populations.

Globally, ultramafic outcrops are renowned for hosting floras with high levels of endemism, including plants with specialised adaptations such as nickel or manganese hyperaccumulation. Soils derived from ultramafic regoliths are generally nutrient-deficient, have major cation imbalances, and have concomitant high concentrations of potentially phytotoxic trace elements, especially nickel. The South and Southeast Asian region has the largest surface occurrences of ultramafic regoliths in the world, but the geoecology of these outcrops is still poorly studied despite severe conservation threats. Due to the paucity of systematic plant collections in many areas and the lack of georeferenced herbarium records and databased information, it is not possible to determine the distribution of species, levels of endemism, and the species most threatened. However, site-specific studies provide insights to the ultramafic geoecology of several locations in South and Southeast Asia. The geoecology of tropical ultramafic regions differs substantially from those in temperate regions in that the vegetation at lower elevations is generally tall forest with relatively low levels of endemism. On ultramafic mountaintops, where the combined forces of edaphic and climatic factors intersect, obligate ultramafic species and hyperendemics often occur. Forest clearing, agricultural development, mining, and climate change-related stressors have contributed to rapid and unprecedented loss of ultramafic-associated habitats in the region. The geoecology of the large ultramafic outcrops of Indonesia’s Sulawesi, Obi and Halmahera, and many other smaller outcrops in South and Southeast Asia, remains largely unexplored, and should be prioritised for study and conservation.

Shifting cultivation has been shown to be the primary cause of land use change in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Traditionally, forested and fallow land are rotated in a slash and burn cycle that has created an agricultural mosaic, including secondary forest, known as the rural complex. This study investigates the land use context of new forest clearing (during 2000–2015) in primary forest areas outside of the established rural complex. These new forest clearings occur as either rural complex expansion (RCE) or isolated forest perforations (IFP), with consequent implications on the forest ecosystem and biodiversity habitat. During 2000–2015, subsistence agriculture was the dominant driver of forest clearing for both extension of settled areas and pioneer clearings removed from settled areas. Less than 1% of clearing was directly attributable to land uses such as mining, plantations, and logging, showing that the impact of commercial operations in the DRC is currently dwarfed by a reliance on small-holder shifting cultivation. However, analyzing the landscape context showed that large-scale agroindustry and resource extraction activities lead to increased forest loss and degradation beyond their previously-understood footprints. The worker populations drawn to these areas create communities that rely on shifting cultivation and non-timber forest products (NTFP) for food, energy, and building materials. An estimated 12% of forest loss within the RCE and 9% of the area of IFP was found to be within 5 km of mines, logging, or plantations. Given increasing demographic and commercial pressures on DRC’s forests, it will be crucial to factor in this landscape-level land use change dynamic in land use planning and sustainability-focused governance.

In August 24, 2017, a massive outbreak took place in the Rakhine state of Myanmar which triggered a huge refugee influx to the Teknaf Peninsula, Bangladesh. To settle the refugees, makeshift camps were built in large numbers destroying huge amount of forest areas near the existing Kutupalong and Nayapara camps. Refugees have been encroaching the nearby forest covers to collect fuelwood and other purposes. These forest destructions have put the wildlife and biodiversity of the system in a substantial pressure as well as altering the land surface temperature (LST). This paper has examined the extent of vegetation change and the changes of LST from 2017 to 2019 throughout Kutupalong and Balukhali camp and adjacent areas using Landsat 8 images. Random forest algorithm and Plank equation were applied on images to identify vegetation change and LST, respectively. The overall and kappa accuracies for the maps of 2017 are 96% and 92%, respectively, while it stands at 94% and 88% for the 2019 image. Results derived from the analysis suggest that an estimated 1876 hectares of forested lands have been decreased in the study area. LST of the study area increased spatially throughout the whole region with a maximum value of 34 °C which is significantly higher than the pre-influx period. If this trend of forest-clearing activities continues, the place will become barren land soon and the LST will also increase. All these factors will ultimately trigger the climate change impacts and biodiversity loss of the area.

In this article, the Ryningsnäs site in Sweden is investigated using large eddy simulation with three different clearing setups: a homogeneous forest, that is, no clearing, the current clearing, that is, the existing clearing at the location, and an extended clearing. Neutral stratification is simulated, and the wind turbines are modelled by a two‐way‐coupled actuator line model. From the simulations, the electrical generator power was found to be the highest for the current clearing. But the fatigue loads were both higher and lower than the homogeneous forest depending on which part of the wind turbine that was investigated. The extended clearing nearly always had the lowest fatigue loads but unfortunately also the lowest electrical generator power. Further optimization of the clearings and the wind turbine locations in relation to them is needed to find the sweet spot where the fatigue loads are lower and the electrical generator power is higher.