Deforestation: Carving up the Amazon

Fraser, Barbara

doi:10.1038/509418a

Cited by 22 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…New roads and development in previously remote areas should be avoided, because opening up access causes chain reactions of effects (Cochrane and Laurance 2008;Fraser 2014). Similarly, Bond and co-authors' (2012) rules about how to handle trade-offs warrant implementation: an acceptable trade-off is defined as delivering net long-term sustainability gains; no trade-off involving significant adverse effects is acceptable, and no displacement of adverse impacts into the future is tolerable "unless all other alternatives are worse"; when a trade-off is proposed, its justification is the responsibility of the proponent, and this justification must be reviewed in an open participatory process, relative to established decision criteria.…”

Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…P32: CEA evaluates effects on specific "valued ecosystem components" (VECs) or significant ecological features 14 (e.g., Beanlands and Duinker 1983;Fisheries and Oceans Canada 2004, 2014, which are considered to be 15 important ecosystem attributes (Bérubé 2007;Gunn and Noble 2009;Canter and Ross 2010;Canter and Atkinson 2011;Dubé et al 2013). VECs can be "physical things (e.g., a fish population), ecological processes (e.g., C sequestration), and even abstract concepts, such as ecological integrity or water quality (Damman et al 1995;Dubé et al 2013).…”

Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Jones

2016

Environ. Rev.

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Cumulative effects assessment (CEA) is a sub-discipline of environmental impact assessment that is concerned with appraising the collective effects of human activities and natural processes on the environment. Aspirations for CEA have been expressed by many authors since 1969, when the foundation of environmental appraisal was laid by the US National Environmental Policy Act. This paper's purposes are (i) to review aspirations for CEA, relative to current practice; and (ii) to fully explain and critique the logic that connects CEA's operational steps and underlying philosophies. A literature review supports the following statements: Some conceptualizations emphasize the delivery of information to support decision making as the key purpose of CEA; others deem collaboration, debate, and learning as most important. Consensus on CEA's operational steps has been reached, but each step requires practitioners to make analytical decisions (e.g., about the scope of issues to include or the time horizon to consider) and objective rules for how to approach those decisions are lacking. Numerical methods for assessing cumulative effects are largely available, meaning that CEA's biggest problems are not scientific. CEA cannot succeed without substantive public engagement, monitoring, and adaptive management. CEA is best undertaken regionally, rather than project-byproject. CEA and planning are complementary, and should be merged. In its most enlightened form, CEA is a useful tool for ensuring that human undertakings ultimately conform to Earth's finite biosphere, but current practice falls short of the ideal, and CEA's logical derivation is not entirely sound. As regards CEA's big problems, sustainability has not been defined clearly enough to make criteria for judging the significance of cumulative effects indisputable; legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks are poorly aligned for CEA; and objective criteria for judging the adequacy of CEA's scope, scale, and thresholds do not exist, which makes the question of how to provide general guidance to practitioners intractable. Recommendations call for sustainability goals to be clearly expressed as measurable targets. Furthermore, precaution in human enterprise should be exercised by avoiding, minimizing, restoring, and offsetting negative cumulative effects. CEA can assist by quantifying and optimizing trade-offs.Key words: environmental impact assessment, planning, environmental management, sustainability, conceptual model, precautionary principle.Résumé : L'évaluation des effets cumulatifs (EEC) est une sous-discipline de l'évaluation de l'impact sur l'environnement qui porte sur l'évaluation des effets collectifs des activités humaines et des processus naturels sur l'environnement. De nombreux auteurs ont exprimé leurs aspirations quant à l'EEC depuis 1969, le moment où les fondements de l'évaluation environnementale ont été jetés par le « National Environmental Policy Act » aux États-Unis. Les buts de cette étude sont (i) d'examiner les aspirations quant à...

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Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Jones

2016

Environ. Rev.

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“…Roads are an increasingly common feature of forest landscapes all over the world (Caro et al 2014;Fraser 2014;Laurance and Balmford 2013), with at least 25 million km of new roads anticipated globally by 2015 (Laurance et al 2014a). Aside from the known direct negative effects of roads through hunting and logging access to remote areas (Coffin 2007;Goosem 2007) and wildlife mortality through vehicle collisions (Bissonette and Rosa 2009), roads also facilitate the spread of exotic flora and fauna (Hulme 2009), influence the spread of disease and danger to public health (Hahn et al 2014), introduce chemicals (Coffin 2007), alter microclimates (Camargo and Kapos 1995;Fraser 2014), increase the risk of fires (Fraser 2014) and act as dispersal barriers limiting the movements of individuals with and between populations (Bissonette and Rosa 2009;Goosem 2007;Laurance et al 2014a;Pocock and Lawrence 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The response of faunal biodiversity to an unmarked road in the Western Amazon

et al. 2015

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Roads are an increasingly common feature of forest landscapes all over the world, and while information accumulates regarding the impacts of roads globally, there remains a paucity of information within tropical regions. Here we investigate the potential for biodiversity impacts from an unmarked road within a rainforest protected area in Western Amazonia. We focus on three key taxonomic groups; amphibians, butterflies and birds, each of which have been shown to be both sensitive and reliable indicators of forest disturbance. In total, 315 amphibians of 26 different species, 348 butterflies of 65 different species, 645 birds representing 77 different species were captured using mist netting and 877 bird records representing 79 different species were recorded using point counts. We provide evidence to show that the presence of a small unmarked road significantly altered levels of faunal species richness, diversity, relative abundance and community structure. This was true to a varying degree for all three taxa, up to and potentially beyond 350 m Communicated by Dirk Sven Schmeller.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (into the forest interior. Responses to the road were shown to be taxon specific. We found increasing proximity to the road had a negative effect on amphibian and understorey bird communities, whilst butterfly and overall diurnal bird communities responded positively. We show that the impact on biodiversity extends up to at least 32 % of the whole reserve area; a serious impact under any scenario. This work provides support for recently voiced calls to limit networks of unmarked roads in order to realistically and effectively preserve natural levels of tropical biodiversity.

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“…Edge effects can lead to the death of big trees (Laurance et al, 2000) and the desiccation of forests due to enhanced evapotranspiration in adjacent forest areas Briant et al, 2010;Fraser, 2014;Kunert et al, 2015). Together with large amounts of debris (left behind after clearing) as a potential fuel, roads can thus increase the vulnerability of the forest to fires (Uhl and Kauffman, 1990;Nepstad et al, 2001).…”

Section: Direct Impacts Of Roads On Tropical Forestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logging Roads in Tropical Forests: Synthesis of Literature Written in French and English Highlights Environmental Impact Reduction Through Improved Engineering

Kleinschroth¹,

Gourlet‐Fleury

Gond

et al. 2017

Bois for. trop.

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Les pistes forestières sont considérées comme des causes majeures de dégrada- tion des forêts en raison de leurs impacts directs et indirects sur le fonctionnement et la diversité des écosystèmes. Compte tenu de l’importance de l’exploitation forestière tropi- cale dans le monde, la bonne gestion de l’in- frastructure routière est cruciale pour réduire les impacts environnementaux associés à ces activités tout en réduisant les coûts des opé- rations. Notre étude visait à analyser comment la question des pistes de débardage avait été traitée dans la littérature scientifique. Des études publiées depuis 65 ans, la plupart en français, dans la revue Bois et Forêts des Tro- piques (BFT), ont été comparées à une série d’études plus récentes extraites des bases de données Scopus et Web of Knowledge. La moitié des articles BFT datent d’avant 1972, alors que les bases de données plus géné- ralistes indiquent une augmentation régu- lière, depuis cette date, du nombre d’articles publiés sur ce thème, qui atteint aujourd’hui un niveau record. Sur l’ensemble de la biblio- graphie, nous avons sélectionné, à des fins d’évaluation critique, 126 articles traitant des impacts et de la gestion des pistes forestières tropicales. Les articles de BFT se caractérisent par une attention particulière portée à des questions pratiques d’ingénierie, tandis que de nombreux articles rédigés en anglais se concentrent sur l’identification des impacts sur les écosystèmes forestiers. Les impacts environnementaux liés aux pistes forestières proviennent de la destruction du couvert pen- dant leur construction, de l’accroissement des effets de lisière, de l’érosion des sols, de la perturbation de la faune et de l’accès plus facile aux forêts pour la chasse et la colonisa- tion agricole. Nous présentons, sur la base de cette revue de la littérature, une liste de recommandations permettant de réduire ces impacts. En conclusion, nous constatons, que malgré l’intérêt continu pour le sujet des pistes forestières, nous savons très peu de choses sur leur devenir à long terme dans les paysages forestiers.

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Deforestation: Carving up the Amazon

Cited by 22 publications

References 8 publications

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

The response of faunal biodiversity to an unmarked road in the Western Amazon

Logging Roads in Tropical Forests: Synthesis of Literature Written in French and English Highlights Environmental Impact Reduction Through Improved Engineering

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