Title
Effects of road infrastructure on forest value across a tri-national Amazonian frontier
Date Issued
01 November 2015
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Baraloto C.
Alverga P.
Barnes G.
Chura N.B.
da Silva I.B.
Castro W.
da Souza H.
de Souza Moll I.E.
Del Alcazar Chilo J.
Quispe J.G.
Kenji D.
Marsik M.
Medeiros H.
Murphy S.
Rockwell C.
Selaya G.
Shenkin A.
Silveira M.
Southworth J.
Vasquez Colomo G.H.
Perz S.
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
Road construction demonstrably accelerates deforestation rates in tropical forests, but its consequences for forest degradation remain less clear. We estimated a series of forest value metrics including components of biodiversity, carbon stocks, and timber and non-timber forest product resources, along the recently paved Inter-Oceanic Highway (IOH) integrating Brazil and Peru along the Bolivian border. We installed 69 vegetation plots in intact terra firme forests representative of local community holdings near and far from the IOH, and we characterized 15 components of forest value for each plot.We observed strong geographic gradients in forest value components across the region, with increases from west to east in aboveground biomass and in the abundance of timber and non-timber forest product trees and regeneration. Plots in communities in Pando, Bolivia, where the IOH remains in part unpaved, had the highest aboveground biomass, standing timber volumes and Brazil nut tree density. In contrast, communities in Madre de Dios, Peru, where settlements and unpaved portions of the IOH have existed for decades, and in Acre, Brazil, where paving of the IOH has been underway for more than a decade, were more degraded. Seven of the fifteen forest value components we measured increased with increasing distance from the IOH, although the magnitude of these effects was weak. Landscape scale remote sensing analyses showed much stronger effects of road proximity on deforestation. We suggest that remote sensing techniques including canopy spectral signatures might be calibrated to characterize multiple components of forest value, so that we can estimate landscape scale impacts of infrastructure developments on both deforestation and forest degradation in tropical regions.
Start page
674
End page
681
Volume
191
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Conservación de la Biodiversidad Ciencias de las plantas, Botánica
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84940569963
Source
Biological Conservation
ISSN of the container
00063207
Sponsor(s)
This study was supported by the US NSF (HSD 0527511 , and CNH 1114924 ) and the French agriculture ministry ( MAAP BGF GuyaSpaSE project). We thank the institutions supporting the training courses that were the foundation of fieldwork in the three countries, including Centro do Trabalhadores da Amazonia (CTA) in Rio Branco, Acre, and the Center for Research on Amazon Protection (CIPA) in Cobija, Pando; and the numerous students and community members in the three countries who provided assistance with fieldwork. We are also grateful to the taxonomic specialists who are investing in capacity building in the region and who assisted with the identification of botanical specimens from the project, including P. Acevedo Rodriguez, C. Berg, D. Daly, R. Foster, and C. Vriesendorp. We also thank A. Duchelle and M. Menton for comments on previous versions of the manuscript.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus