Four Decades of Forest Persistence, Clearance and Logging on Borneo
Four Decades of Forest Persistence, Clearance and Logging on Borneo David L. A. Gaveau1*, Sean Sloan2, Elis Molidena1, Husna Yaen1, Doug Sheil1,3, Nicola K. Abram4,5, Marc Ancrenaz5,6,7,8, Robert Nasi1, Marcela Quinones9, Niels Wielaard9, Erik Meijaard1,5,10 1 Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia, 2 Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia, 3 Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management (INA), Norwegian University of Life Science (NMBU), A˚s, Norway, 4 Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, 5 Borneo Futures project, People and Nature Consulting International, Ciputat, Jakarta, Indonesia, 6 Sabah Wildlife Department, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, 7 HUTAN, Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Programme, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, 8 North England Zoological Society, Chester Zoo, Chester, United Kingdom, 9 SarVision, Wageningen, The Netherlands, 10 School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Abstract The native forests of Borneo have been impacted by selective logging, fire, and conversion to plantations at unprecedented scales since industrial-scale extractive industries began in the early 1970s. There is no island-wide documentation of forest clearance or logging since the 1970s. This creates an information gap for conservation planning, especially with regard to selectively logged forests that maintain high conservation potential. Analysing LANDSAT images, we estimate that 75.7% (558,060 km2) of Borneo’s area (737,188 km2) was forested around 1973. Based upon a forest cover map for 2010 derived using ALOS-PALSAR and visually reviewing LANDSAT images, we estimate that the 1973 forest area had declined by 168,493 km2 (30.2%) in 2010.
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