Biodiversity, environmental change and land-use policy in Sulawesi and Maluku

毁林和森林退化正在造成热带生物多样性的广泛丧失，深刻影响生态系统功能以及自然资源和生态系统资产（自然资本）的存量。当森林被转变为永久性农业时，多样性的减少最为严重，这一过程破坏了授粉和虫害防治等重要生态系统服务的提供。相比之下，管理良好的小农农业的影响就不那么极端，因为相关的地块通常嵌入由休耕地和森林遗迹组成的景观马赛克中。Wallacea目前正在成为印度尼西亚新的发展前沿，也是农业综合企业和采掘业的目标。它是亚洲热带地区一个特别未被充分研究的部分，拥有特别独特的脊椎动物多样性，形成了世界上第二高的地方性，使该地区成为保护和生态系统服务提供的全球重点。此外，土地利用历史和目前的轨迹仍然知之甚少，正是由于这个原因，该地区在最近的森林砍伐基线中被忽略了。事实上，在应用东南亚其他地方开发的土地利用变化模型以及预测未来环境变化的影响时，Wallacea群岛的多样化历史被认为是不确定性的主要来源。考虑到Wallacea地区预计会出现进一步的森林退化和农业转型，该地区自然资本的未来前景在很大程度上取决于我们如何管理人类改造的景观。这个项目汇集了一个来自英国和印度尼西亚大学的跨学科团队，以及四个活跃在Wallacea的非政府组织合作伙伴，将提供必要的科学，以了解土地利用紧张局势和生物多样性对Wallacea环境变化的反应。我们提出了一项新颖而雄心勃勃的研究，即在研究较少的岛屿上，通过多种景观对近期和历史土地覆盖变化的生物多样性响应，以便对当前土地利用政策的评估和对未来环境情景的预测将是基于证据和现实的。更具体地说，将根据可公开获得的遥感数据和当地土地使用计划，为每个景观生成土地覆盖变化的空间轨迹。这将使我们能够将森林覆盖回溯到华莱士的时代，并预测国际政策承诺的关键目标年份（例如联合国可持续发展目标的2030年和联合国气候变化框架的2050年）。重要的是，我们将从森林、农林业和集约化农田（如可可、油棕、咖啡）的土地覆盖梯度中生成新的生物多样性数据，模拟群落对过去、现在和未来森林覆盖的响应，并应用最先进的基因组学方法评估几个重要保护旗舰物种对土地覆盖变化的遗传和进化响应（NERC-Ristekdikti计划的目标1和2）。我们将以陆生脊椎动物为重点，追踪阿尔弗雷德·拉塞尔·华莱士穿越苏拉威西岛和摩鹿加群岛（马鲁古）的旅程，这些动物是旨在保护生物多样性的环境政策通常关注的对象。最后，在项目合作伙伴的合作下，我们将利用我们的土地覆盖、生物多样性和额外的碳和社会经济数据（项目目标2和3），评估当前土地利用政策对生态系统资产和依赖的人类受益者的影响。由于印度尼西亚的许多省份尚未实施新要求的空间规划程序，我们的联合环境研究为当地发展提供了前所未有的机会。

Deforestation and forest degradation are causing widespread loss of tropical biodiversity, profoundly impacting ecosystem functioning as well as stocks of natural resources and ecosystem assets (natural capital). The greatest reductions in diversity are experienced as forests are converted to permanent agriculture, a process that disrupts the delivery of important ecosystem services such as pollination and pest control. In contrast, the impacts from well-managed smallholder agriculture are less extreme, as the associated land parcels are typically embedded within landscape mosaics comprising fallows and forest remnants.Wallacea is currently emerging as a new developmental frontier in Indonesia and a target for agribusiness and extractive industries. A particularly understudied part of the Asian tropics, it has an exceptionally distinctive vertebrate diversity which forms the second highest level of endemism in the world, making the region a global priority for both conservation and ecosystem service provision. In addition, land-use history and current trajectories remain poorly understood, with the region notably omitted from recent deforestation baselines for this very reason. In fact, the diverse history of the Wallacea archipelago is acknowledged as a major source of uncertainty when applying land-use change models developed from elsewhere in Southeast Asia, as well as predicting the impacts of future environmental change. Given that further forest degradation and agricultural conversion are expected in Wallacea, the future prospects for natural capital in the region depend to a large extent on how we manage human-modified landscapes.Bringing together an interdisciplinary team from British and Indonesian universities, with four NGO partners active in Wallacea, this project will deliver the science needed to understand tensions in land-use and the responses of biodiversity to environmental change in Wallacea. We propose a novel and ambitious study of biodiversity responses to recent and historical land-cover change across multiple landscapes in little-studied islands, so that evaluations of current land-use policies and predictions of future environmental scenarios will be evidence-based and realistic. More specifically, spatial trajectories of land-cover change will be generated for each landscape, drawing from publicly-available remote-sensed data and local land-use plans. This will enable us to hindcast forest cover back to Wallace's time and forecast to key target years for international policy commitments (e.g. 2030 for the UN Sustainable Development Goals and 2050s for the UN Framework on Climate Change). Significantly, we will generate new biodiversity data from across land-cover gradients in forests, agroforests and intensive farmland (e.g. cocoa, oil palm, coffee), model community responses to past, present and future forest cover, and apply state-of-the-art genomics methods to assess genetic and evolutionary responses to land-cover change for several important conservation flagship species (NERC-Ristekdikti programme's Goals 1 and 2). Focusing on terrestrial vertebrates, the fauna that environmental policies aiming at safeguarding biodiversity are typically focused upon, we will track Alfred Russel Wallace's journey through Sulawesi and the Moluccas (Maluku). Finally, with collaboration from Project Partners with additional expertise in Wallacea, we will evaluate the impact of current land-use policies on ecosystem assets and dependent human beneficiaries, drawing on our land-cover, biodiversity and additional carbon and socio-economic data (Programme's Goals 2 and 3). Because many provinces in Indonesia are yet to implement newly-required spatial planning processes, our joint environmental research has an unprecedented opportunity to inform local development.