Loss and vulnerability of lowland forests in mainland Southeast Asia

Abstract

Despite containing extraordinary levels of biodiversity, lowland (<200 m asl) tropical forests are extremely threatened globally. Southeast Asia is an area of high species richness and endemicity under considerable anthropogenic threat with, unfortunately, scant focus on its lowland forests. We estimated extent of lowland forest loss from 1998 to 2018, including inside protected areas and determined the vulnerability of this remaining forest. Maximum likelihood classification techniques were used to classify Landsat images to estimate lowland forest cover in 1998 and 2018. We used Bayesian belief networks with 20 variables to evaluate vulnerability of the forest that remained in 2018. Analyses were conducted at two spatial scales: landscape patch (analogous to ecoregion) and country level. Over 20 years, >120,000 km2 of forest (50% of forest present in 1998) was lost. Of the 14 lowland forest patches, 6 lost >50% of their area. At the country scale, Cambodia had the greatest deforestation (>47,500 km2). In 2018, 18% of the lowlands were forested, and 20% of these forests had some formal protection. Approximately 50% of the lowland forest inside protected areas (c. 11,000 km2) was also lost during the study period. Most lowland forest remaining is highly vulnerable; eight landscape patches had >50% categorized as such. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that the presence of protected areas alone will not prevent further deforestation. We suggest that more collaborative conservation strategies with local communities that accommodate conservation concessions specifically for lowland forests are urgently needed to prevent further destruction of these valuable habitats.

The State of Migratory Landbirds in the East Asian Flyway: Distributions, Threats, and Conservation Needs

“…Forest loss and degradation affect many migratory landbirds throughout their distributions in the EAF, particularly at the tropical wintering grounds (Amano and Yamaura, 2007;. Asian tropical lowlands have suffered the highest rates of forest loss globally (Corlett, 2014;Stibig et al, 2014;Namkhan et al, 2021). Extensive deforestation throughout the lowlands of the Greater Sundas is predicted to affect both globally threatened and more common species that winter predominantly in lowland forest (Wells, 2007;.…”

Vulnerability to climate change of species in protected areas in Thailand

“…Tropical East Asia supports an estimated 15–25% of global terrestrial biodiversity in only 4% of global land area 8 and many studies have identified this region’s species and ecosystems as particularly threatened 8 – 11 . Unfortunately, this region, as well as most of the individual countries of which it is comprised, is relatively data-poor, with incomplete species lists, inadequate conservation assessments, and a lack of data on population sizes and trends for threatened species 12 .…”

Sun bears use 14‐year‐old previously logged forest more than primary forest in Sabah, Malaysia

“…Forestry practices in Southeast Asia are gradually improving (Keenan et al 2015, MacDicken et al 2015, but regulations, targets, and effectiveness vary widely, and reduced-impact logging techniques are mainly limited to a few countries in the region (FAO 2011a). Deforestation and fires remain serious problems (Miettinen et al 2011, Wilcove et al 2013, Dong et al 2014, Margono et al 2014, Hansen et al 2020, especially in the lowlands (Namkhan et al 2020), but also with worrying, previously unrecognized increases in higher elevations (Zeng et al 2018). Moreover, forests can become degraded while seemingly remaining intact, due to the limits of resolution of remote sensing (FAO 2011b, Margono et al 2012, Bryan et al 2013, Miettinen et al 2014.…”