Biodiversity, ecosystem functions and policy across a tropical forest modification gradient

热带森林支持着世界陆地生物多样性的三分之二以上。然而，35%至50%的热带森林已经退化，森林砍伐的速度还在继续增加。次生林、人工林和其他人类改造的栖息地将越来越多地主导热带景观，导致人们担心这些景观的人类退化将增加温室气体排放，并危及地方、区域和全球尺度上的生态系统服务。受保护的森林面积在未来不太可能大幅增加，因此，热带景观中生物多样性和重要的生物地球化学循环以及与之相关的生态系统服务的持久性将在很大程度上取决于我们对待更广泛的热带景观的方式。人类改造热带森林项目旨在通过“与森林改造梯度相关的综合观测和建模”，“显著提高我们对热带森林生物多样性和生物地球化学循环之间联系的理解”。为了实现这一目标，我们的联盟将在沙巴（马来西亚婆罗洲）的SAFE景观中沿扰动梯度进行调查，以检测模式，并结合可操作的现场实验，以获得对生物多样性-功能联系的机制理解。我们将评估生物多样性的不同要素（例如受保护的物种）与生态系统功能（生物地球化学循环）的关联程度。然后，我们将从实验地点升级到景观尺度，以生成生态系统功能、生物多样性和温室气体通量的空间层，为政策情景建模提供信息。因此，我们的工作将(1)表征土壤微生物的功能并测量相关的生物地球化学通量；(2)通过实验验证地上生物多样性与土壤功能之间的联系；(3)建立和补充鸟类和哺乳动物的现有数据集，探索保护重点物种的功能与分布之间的相关性；(4)探索优化生物多样性和功能保护的政策方案。

Tropical forests support over two-thirds of the world's terrestrial biodiversity. However, between 35% and 50% of tropical forests have already been degraded, and the rate of deforestation continues to increase. Increasingly, secondary forests, plantations and other human-modified habitats will dominate tropical landscapes, leading to concerns that human degradation of these landscapes will elevate greenhouse gas emissions and jeopardise ecosystem services at local, regional and global scales. The area of protected forests is unlikely to increase greatly in the future, so the persistence of biodiversity and the important biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem services associated with it in tropical landscapes will depend to a large extent on the way we treat the wider tropical landscape. The Human Modified Tropical Forests programme seeks to 'significantly improve our understanding of the links between biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles in tropical forests' through 'integrated observations and modelling linked to gradients in forest modification'. To contribute towards this goal our consortium will use surveys along a disturbance gradient within the SAFE landscape in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo) to detect patterns, combined with manipulative field experiments to gain a mechanistic understanding of biodiversity-function linkages. We will assess the extent to which different elements of biodiversity (e.g. species of conservation concern) are associated with measures of ecosystem function (biogeochemical cycles). We will then upscale from the experimental sites to the landscape-scale to generate spatial layers of ecosystem function, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas fluxes to inform policy scenario modelling.Our work will thus (1) characterise soil microbial function and measuring associated biogeochemical fluxes; (2) Experimentally test the links between aboveground biodiversity and soil function; (3) Build and add to existing datasets for bird and mammals, and explore correlations between functioning and the distribution of species of conservation concern; and (4) Explore policy scenarios for optimising biodiversity and function protection.