Deforestation alters species interactions

Tropical deforestation alters hummingbird movement patterns.

Reduced pollination success, as a function of habitat loss and fragmentation, appears to be a global phenomenon. Disruption of pollinator movement is one hypothesis put forward to explain this pattern in pollen limitation. However, the small size of pollinators makes them very difficult to track; thus, knowledge of their movements is largely speculative. Using tiny radio transmitters (0.25 g), ...

3 Estimating spatial interactions in deforestation decisions

Ongoing decreases in the stock of tropical forest have long been a major concern, due to their implications for biodiversity loss and provision of ecosystem services. Ecological research also provides evidence that even if the stock is held constant, the spatial pattern of forest affects the level of services generated (McCoy and Mushinsky 1994; Twedt and Loesch 1999; Diaz et al. 2000; Parkhurs...

Contagious development: Neighbor interactions in deforestation

Evaluating Interactions of Forest Conservation Policies on Avoided Deforestation

We estimate the effects on deforestation that have resulted from policy interactions between parks and payments and between park buffers and payments in Costa Rica between 2000 and 2005. We show that the characteristics of the areas where protected and unprotected lands are located differ significantly. Additionally, we find that land characteristics of each of the policies and of the places wh...

Thresholds of species loss in Amazonian deforestation frontier landscapes.

In the Brazilian Amazon, private land accounts for the majority of remaining native vegetation. Understanding how land-use change affects the composition and distribution of biodiversity in farmlands is critical for improving conservation strategies in the face of rapid agricultural expansion. Working across an area exceeding 3 million ha in the southwestern state of Rondônia, we assessed how t...