Large-scale Ecological Restoration of Degraded Tropical Forest Lands: The Potential Role of Timber Plantations

background

This study offers suggestions for how timber plantations can be designed to yield timber and improve biodiversity on cleared and degraded lands.

Conclusions & Takeaways

The author discusses the value native trees can have in plantations with social and ecological goals beyond only high-volume production. The advantages, disadvantages an impediments to implementing native species reforestation are discussed. This study also presents advantages to understory development to soil erosion control and biodiversity along with potential problems with competition between the canopy classes. Data suggests that plantations, especially exotic monocultures, have lower wildlife diversity than more mixed plantations natural forests. Finally, this article describes how managing for species rich plantations can still allow the plantation to be managed for harvesting, for even more biodiversity, for selective logging, and for productive forests that are still structurally complex and multi-layered ecosystems. By focusing on multiple objectives, unlike a single objective of productivity, tropical plantations can more likely meet a wider range of ecological, social, and economic goals.