Sacred forest groves in the Western Ghats of India are small fragments of tropical forest that have received protection due to religious beliefs and cultural practices. These forest fragments are an example of community-based conservation and they serve as refugia for many forest-dwelling species in otherwise highly anthropogenic tropical forest-agriculture landscapes of the Indian Western Ghat...

introduction urban landscape is experiencing rapid changes which put all urban domains under pressures. these processes revolutionize urban landscape into spaces without ecologic values. the sustainability of green patches and corridors has been scathed by lack of ecological approaches in planning and design. therefore, urban green spaces structures and functions have been damaged. green spaces...

Seed predation by small rodents is an emerging theme in the ecology of modified landscapes. Here we investigate the role played by the small rodent Oryzomys oniscus as a seed predator of large-seeded trees in a large remnant of the Atlantic forest - the Coimbra forest (3,500 ha), Alagoas state, northeastern Brazil. O. oniscus was captured and identified by setting twenty 500 m long transects, e...

The Monasavu catchment was selected as an additional study site for biodiversity assessment at the top of the PABITRA wet-zone landscape transect on Viti Levu. The site consists of upland rain forest with cloud forest and a freshwater lake. The lake was constructed to supply hydroelectric power. The biota of the area has been little studied, but initial surveys indicate that many endemic specie...

lations disproportionately have environmental risks while the wealthy and better educated gain disproportionately from protecting unique ecosystems. We test this hypothesis in an analysis of the decline of southern Appalachian spruce-$r forests. We calculate willingness-to-pay measures for forest protection through a contingent valuation survey. Survey respondents consider spruce-fir forest pro...

We used the SLEUTH urban growth model, closely coupled with a land transition model, to simulate future urban growth in the Houston metropolitan area, one of the fastest growing metropolises in the United States during the past three decades. The model was calibrated with historical data extracted from a time series of satellite images. Three specific scenarios are designed to simulate the spat...

Halton A. Peters* Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA *Correspondence: E-mail: hpeters@globalecology. stanford.edu Abstract Density-dependent mortality has long been posited as a possible mechanism for the regulation of tropical forest tree density. Despite numerous experimental and phenomenological investigations, the extent to which such mechanisms ...

Poore and Thang found that a great deal has been achieved – perhaps more than most expected (see pages 5–6). Advances in policy have been made: the report finds, for example, that “significant progress has been made in policy and legislative reform in almost all producer countries in all three continents”. Most countries have been able to establish a permanent forest estate and have increased t...