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

砍伐森林和森林退化正在造成热带生物多样性的广泛丧失，对生态系统的功能以及自然资源和生态系统资产(自然资本)的存量产生了深远的影响。当森林被转变为永久农业时，多样性的减少最严重，这一过程扰乱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没有那么极端，因为相关的地块通常嵌入由荒漠和森林残留物组成的景观镶嵌中。华乐果目前正在成为印度尼西亚的一个新的发展前沿，并成为农业综合企业和采掘业的目标。作为亚洲热带的一个特别未被研究的部分，它具有特别独特的脊椎动物多样性，形成了世界第二高水平的地方性疾病，使该地区成为保护和提供生态系统服务的全球优先事项。此外，土地使用历史和目前的轨迹仍然知之甚少，由于这个原因，最近的森林砍伐基线明显忽略了该区域。事实上，在应用东南亚其他地区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，华拉契亚群岛多样化的历史被认为是不确定的主要来源。鉴于Wallacea预计还会有更多的森林退化和农业转化，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为改变的景观。该项目汇集了来自英国和印度尼西亚大学的跨学科团队，以及活跃在Wallacea的四个非政府组织伙伴，该项目将提供必要的科学知识，以了解Wallacea土地利用的紧张局势和生物多样性对环境变化的反应。我们提出了一项新颖而雄心勃勃的研究，研究生物多样性对研究较少的岛屿上多种景观的近期和历史土地覆盖变化的反应，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的和现实的。更具体地说，将根据公开可用的遥感数据和当地土地利用计划，为每一种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率追溯到华莱士时代，并预测国际政策承诺的关键目标年(例如，2030年为联合国可持续发展目标，2050年为联合国气候变化框架)。重要的是，我们将从森林、农林和集约农田(如可可、油棕榈、咖啡)的土地覆盖梯度中产生新的生物多样性数据，模拟社区对过去、现在和未来森林覆盖的反应，并应用最先进的基因组学方法来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反应(NERC-Ristekdikti方案的目标1和2)。聚焦于陆生脊椎动物，这是旨在保护生物多样性的环境政策通常关注的动物，我们将追踪阿尔弗雷德·罗素·华莱士穿越苏拉威西和摩鹿加(马鲁古)的旅程。最后，我们将与在Wallacea领域拥有更多专门知识的项目伙伴协作，利用我们的土地覆盖、生物多样性以及更多的碳和社会经济数据，评估当前土地使用政策对生态系统资产和依赖人类受益人的影响(方案的目标2和3)。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获得了前所未有的机会，为当地发展提供信息。

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.