Infrastructure Development and Tropical Forests

​Roads and other infrastructure development projects are expanding globally at the fastest rate in human history, especially in biodiversity-rich developing tropical regions. Infrastructure expansion often promotes forest loss and land-cover conversion, fires, poaching, and other environmental and societal impacts. Understanding where and how these development projects will impact tropical forests is crucial to their survival.

Tropical Forest Restoration

Deforestation has resulted in substantial loss and fragmentation of the world’s tropical forests, reducing their ability to support biodiversity and provide ecosystem services. Ecological restoration is a useful tool for expanding and connecting habitat patches in fragmented landscapes to retain biodiversity value and provision of ecosystem services. Recognizing this, numerous global initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge, are establishing pledges to restore 350 million hectares by 2030.

Large-scale Ecological Restoration

​Restoration projects in India and Ethiopia in 2019, planted 220 million trees and 350 million trees, respectively. The successfulness of restoration projects depends on many factors including planting density, species selection, and site maintenance. However, all these factors present trade-offs between quality of restoration, area that can be restored, and cost of the restoration projects.

Land-cover Change 

Humans having been changing the surface of our planet for millennia, however the pace is rapidly increasing. Habitat loss due to land-cover change is the main threat to 85% of IUCN Red List species. Additionally, land-cover change has drastic effects on global carbon and water cycles, among countless other ecosystem services. Understanding where, how, and why humans change the surface of the planet is essential to predicting and mitigating the worst impacts.

Miscellaneous

Research works on topics not covered by the main research themes.
Miscellaneous topics include tropical forest phenology, carbon farming, and others.