Domains of scale in cumulative effects of energy sector development on boreal birds.

Context: Industrial development in Canada's boreal forest creates cumulative environmental effects on biodiversity. Some effects may be scale-dependent, creating uncertainty in understanding and hindering effective management.

Objectives: We estimated cumulative effects of energy sector development on distributions of sixteen migratory songbird species at multiple spatial scales within the boreal region of Alberta, Canada, and evaluated evidence for scale domains in species responses.

Burning savanna for avian species richness and functional diversity.

Prescribed fire is used throughout fire-prone landscapes to conserve biodiversity. Current best practice in managing savanna systems advocates methods based on the assumption that increased fire-mediated landscape heterogeneity (pyrodiversity) will promote biodiversity. However, considerable knowledge gaps remain in our understanding of how savanna wildlife responds to the composition and configuration of pyrodiverse landscapes.

Land-sharing versus land-sparing logging: reconciling timber extraction with biodiversity conservation.

Selective logging is a major driver of rainforest degradation across the tropics. Two competing logging strategies are proposed to meet timber demands with the least impact on biodiversity: land sharing, which combines timber extraction with biodiversity protection across the concession; and land sparing, in which higher intensity logging is combined with the protection of intact primary forest reserves. We evaluate these strategies by comparing the abundances and species richness of birds, dung beetles and ants in Borneo, using a protocol that allows us to control for both timber yield and net profit across strategies.

Trophic flexibility and the persistence of understory birds in intensively logged rainforest.

Effects of logging on species composition in tropical rainforests are well known but may fail to reveal key changes in species interactions. We used nitrogen stable-isotope analysis of 73 species of understory birds to quantify trophic responses to repeated intensive logging of rainforest in northern Borneo and to test 4 hypotheses: logging has significant effects on trophic positions and trophic-niche widths of species, and the persistence of species in degraded forest is related to their trophic positions and trophic-niche widths in primary forest. Species fed from higher up the food chain and had narrower trophic-niche widths in degraded forest.

Degraded lands worth protecting: the biological importance of Southeast Asia's repeatedly logged forests.

Southeast Asia is a hotspot of imperiled biodiversity, owing to extensive logging and forest conversion to oil palm agriculture. The degraded forests that remain after multiple rounds of intensive logging are often assumed to be of little conservation value; consequently, there has been no concerted effort to prevent them from being converted to oil palm. However, no study has quantified the biodiversity of repeatedly logged forests.