Climate Change

Shaded-Coffee: A Nature-Based Strategy for Coffee Production Under Climate Change? A Review

Background

Coffee agroforestry systems are a natural climate solution that are used to reduce the impact of coffee cultivation on ecosystem health. Coffee generates over $200 billion in income globally each year, so ensuring the efficiency and success of cultivation is crucial for human livelihood. Coffee agroforestry systems are often variable, and there lacks a compiled knowledge base about these systems and practices.

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The Embedded Agroecology of Coffee Agroforestry: A Contextualized Review of Smallholder Farmers’ Adoption and Resistance

Background

Agroforestry crops are known to provide many benefits to both people and nature. Implementing agroforestry practices can be complex and requires improvement in certain regions and practices. Coffee agroforestry is not widely adopted and there is a lack of knowledge about the implementation of agroforestry techniques for coffee production.

Goals and Methods

The authors conduct a literature review including coffee production in Colombia, Malawi, and Uganda to understand their perceptions of coffee agroforestry, decisions on implementation, local policies, and capacity to adopt new practices.

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The eco-evolutionary history of Madagascar presents unique challenges to tropical forest restoration

Background

Madagascar forests contain high biodiversity and species endemism, while also being heavily threatened by deforestation. Restoration of these forests may be unique to many other restoration projects due to the unique evolutionary history of the island.

Goals and Methods

The authors conduct a literature review of publications to determine if forest restoration in Madagascar is more challenging. With compiled literature from 1990 to 2022, the authors consequently describe unique challenges to Madagascar forest restoration in order to facilitate higher quality restoration projects.

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Disrupted montane forest recovery hinders biodiversity conservation in the tropical Andes

Background

In the U.N. Decade on Restoration, recovering degraded forests is a high priority. Andean montane forests are a biodiversity hotspot, storing large quantities of carbon, and providing many sources for human livelihood. Many parts of the Andean forests are recovering after agriculture abandonment, but it is not yet known how the dynamics of these recovery processes progress over time. Knowledge of forest regeneration trajectory is crucial for further restoration planning.

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Ten principles for restoring campo rupestre, a threatened tropical, megadiverse, nutrient-impoverished montane grassland

Background

In the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, one of the most overlooked ecosystem types is tropical grasslands. Studies on these ecosystems are lacking, as are the foundations for restoration. These foundational points of policy, practice, and governance in addition to science need to be addressed. The authors provide 10 principles to restore the campo rupestre, a tropical grassland that is threatened by human activities including mining.

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Assisted restoration interventions drive functional recovery of tropical wet forest tree communities

Background

Integrating science and practice is one of the main goals of the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. A variety of factors can influence the application of restoration treatments across tropical ecosystems. Deciding where to apply a restoration strategy on the spectrum between natural regeneration an active restoration planting can be challenging and there is not enough current knowledge that compares these methods.

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Identifying hotspots for ecosystem restoration across heterogeneous tropical savannah-dominated regions

Background

In the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, ecological restoration projects are a valuable tool for meeting global sustainability climate goals. Tropical regions are at the center of attention for their high biodiversity, carbon sink, and benefits to culture and human livelihood. Tropical dry savannahs are understudied even though they cover a large portion of tropical regions. Savannah dominated landscapes are valuable for their high plant diversity and vegetation type variation and high species turnover. Benefits to restoring these ecosystem types are also understudied.

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Tropical forest restoration under future climate change

Background

Climate change mitigation requires a large amount of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere. One major avenue for accomplishing this is looking to tropical forests. These ecosystems are heavy carbon sinks and bring a multitude of benefits to people and the planet. However, these ecosystems are frequently degraded and forest restoration projects may be hindered in the future due to altered fire regimes, extreme heat or drought, and other characteristics of severe climate change.

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How are biodiversity and carbon stock recovered during tropical forest restoration? Supporting the ecological paradigms and political context involved

Background

Ecological restoration is a tool for achieving global environmental agendas and climate mitigation. There are many studies on the restoration of ecosystem biodiversity, as well as on the restoration of ecosystem functioning. The relationship between these two ecological features is not yet clearly known beyond a positive correlation between the two. The authors conduct this meta-analysis to explore the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the context of ecological restoration.

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Multidimensional tropical forest recovery

Background

Tropical forests are disappearing at a high rate due to deforestation. They also have the potential to regenerate to diverse and high-quality forest once more. The authors analyze 12 forest attributes to assess how forest recovery and succession progresses. This review is a compiled analysis done in a chronosequence across three continents and multiple latitudes globally.

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