ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2006) — Deforestation and habitat loss are expected to lead to an extinction crisis among tropical forest species. Humans in rural settings contribute most to deforestation of extant tropical forests. However, "Trends such as slowing population growth and intense urbanization give reason to hope that deforestation will slow, regeneration will accelerate, and mass extinction of tropical forest species will be avoided," report S.J. Wright, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and H.C. Muller-Landau, University of Minnesota, in Biotropica online.

The authors show that the proportion of potential forest cover remaining correlates with human population density among countries in both the tropics and the temperate zone. They use United Nations population projections and continent-specific relationships between both total and rural population density and forest remaining today to project future tropical forest cover.

According to their projections, deforestation rates will decrease as population growth slows, and a much larger area will continue to be forested than previous studies suggest. Tropical forests diminished during repeated Pleistocene glacial events in Africa and more recently in selected areas that supported large prehistoric human populations. "Despite many caveats, our projections for forest cover provide hope that many tropical forest species will be able to survive the current wave of deforestation and human population growth," stress Wright and Mueller-Landau.

"Creative strategies to preserve tropical biodiversity might include policies to improve conditions in tropical urban settings to encourage urbanization and preemptive conservation efforts in countries with large areas of extant forest and large projected rates of future human population growth," the authors conclude. "We hope that this first attempt inspires others to produce better models of future tropical forest cover and associated policy recommendations."

Reference: S. Joseph Wright and Helene C. Mueller-Landau. The Future of Tropical Forest Species. 2006. Biotropica. 

San Antonio, Rio Nanay, Peru. (Credit: Beth King, STRI)

Related Stories

Tropical Deforestation And Global Warming: Smithsonian Scientist Challenges Results Of Recent Study (Feb. 14, 2003) — Late last year, Frédéric Achard and colleagues published a controversial article in which they contended that earlier estimates of worldwide tropical deforestation and atmospheric ...  > read more

Commercial Hunting May Be Largest Threat To Tropical Forests (Apr. 26, 2007) — Recent research considers the consequences of commercial hunting in the tropics, including its direct impacts on vertebrates and indirect impacts on plants. Using more than 100 forest sites scattered ...  > read more

Scientists Must Offer Solutions For Conserving Tropical Forests In A Rapidly Changing World (Sep. 4, 2005) — As human populations increase, tropical forests change in different ways. Old-growth forests become agricultural lands, degraded land is abandoned, urbanization intensifies, and the populations of ...  > read more

Confirmed: Deforestation Plays Critical Climate Change Role (May 11, 2007) — New research confirms that avoiding deforestation can play a key role in reducing future greenhouse gas concentrations. Scientists report in the journal Science that tropical deforestation releases ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Our Changing Climate