Marsh, Charles J. and Turner, Edgar C. and Blonder, Benjamin Wong and Bongalov, Boris and Both, Sabine and Cruz, Rudi S. and Elias, Dafydd M. O. and Hemprich-Bennett, David and Jotan, Palasiah and Kemp, Victoria and Kritzler, Ully H. and Milne, Sol and Milodowski, David T. and Mitchell, Simon L. and Pillco, Milenka Montoya and Nunes, Matheus Henrique and Riutta, Terhi and Robinson, Samuel J. B. and Slade, Eleanor M. and Bernard, Henry and Burslem, David F. R. P. and Chung, Arthur Y. C. and Clare, Elizabeth L. and Coomes, David A. and Davies, Zoe G. and Edwards, David P. and Johnson, David and Kratina, Pavel and Malhi, Yadvinder and Majalap, Noreen and Nilus, Reuben and Ostle, Nicholas J. and Rossiter, Stephen J. and Struebig, Matthew J. and Tobias, Joseph A. and Williams, Mathew and Ewers, Robert M. and Lewis, Owen T. and Reynolds, Glen and Teh, Yit Arn and Hector, Andy (2025) Tropical forest clearance impacts biodiversity and function, whereas logging changes structure. Science, 387 (6730). pp. 171-175. ISSN 0036-8075
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The impacts of degradation and deforestation on tropical forests are poorly understood, particularly at landscape scales. We present an extensive ecosystem analysis of the impacts of logging and conversion of tropical forest to oil palm from a large-scale study in Borneo, synthesizing responses from 82 variables categorized into four ecological levels spanning a broad suite of ecosystem properties: (i) structure and environment, (ii) species traits, (iii) biodiversity, and (iv) ecosystem functions. Responses were highly heterogeneous and often complex and nonlinear. Variables that were directly impacted by the physical process of timber extraction, such as soil structure, were sensitive to even moderate amounts of logging, whereas measures of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning were generally resilient to logging but more affected by conversion to oil palm plantation.