While we know that deforestation in the tropics is increasingly driven by commercial agriculture, most tropical countries still lack recent and spatially-explicit assessments of the relative importance of pasture and cropland expansion in causing forest loss. Here we present a spatially explicit quantification of the extent to which cultivated land and grassland expanded at the expense of fores...

This study tested the degree to which single date, near-nadir AVHRR image could provide forest cover estimates comparable to the phase I estimates obtained from the traditional photo-based techniques of the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. FIA program is part of the United States Department of Agriculture-Forest Service (USFS). A six-county region in east Texas was selected for this...

1. Forest landscape restoration (FLR) has gained momentum globally and guidance is needed to identify those species, sites planting methods that increase success. Incorporating native Non-Timber Product (NTFP) species in FLR approaches provides an opportunity simultaneously deliver ecological economic benefits. The Brazil nut tree one of the most valuable Amazonian NTFP could fulfil a cornersto...

We explored the impact of forest conversion to agricultural mosaic on anuran, lizard, snake, and turtle assemblages of Neotropical dry forests. Over 2 years, we sampled 6 small watersheds on the west coast of Mexico, 3 conserved and 3 disturbed. The disturbed watersheds were characterized by a mosaic of pastures and cultivated fields (corn, beans, squash) intermingled with patches of different ...

Many processes that are fundamental to tropical rainforest maintenance and regeneration take place in the forest canopy. Recently developed access techniques afford biologists nondestructive means to document and quantify canopy biota and their accompanying activities and interactions. Results from studies involving within-canopy observations and measurements of nutrient cycling, epiphyte distr...

One and a half centuries after Darwin visited Chiloe Island, what he described as "…an island covered by one great forest…" has lost two-thirds of its forested areas. At this biodiversity hotspot, forest surface is becoming increasingly fragmented due to unregulated logging, clearing for pastures and replacement by exotic tree plantations. Decrease in patch size, increased isolation and "edge e...

Tropical forest restoration is becoming increasingly more applied to offset biodiversity loss and maintain ecosystem processes, but knowledge about its efficacy is still limited. We evaluated the success of tropical forest active restoration using dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) as bioindicators and combining measures of species diversity, composition and functional diversity. We assess...