Laurance, William F. (2013) Emerging threats to tropical forests. In: Lowman, Margaret, Devy, Soubadra, and Ganesh, T., (eds.) Treetops at Risk: challenges of global canopy ecology and conservation. Springer, New York, NY, USA, pp. 71-79.

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Abstract

The drivers of tropical forest destruction and key perils to biodiversity have changed over the past one to two decades and will continue to evolve in the future. Industrial drivers of forest conversion–such as logging, large-scale soy and cattle farming, oil-palm plantations, and oil and gas development–have escalated in importance, buoyed by rapid globalization, economic growth, and rising standards of living in developing nations. Biofuels are likely to grow rapidly as a driver of future forest destruction. Climate change is increasingly emerging as a potentially serious driver of change in the tropics, and some fauna, such as amphibians, are being decimated by emerging pathogens. In general, old-growth forests are vanishing rapidly and being replaced by fragmented, secondary, and logged forests. These various environmental insults often operate in concert, magnifying their impacts and posing an even greater threat to tropical forest canopies and their biodiversity.

Item ID:	30308
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	978-1-4614-7161-5
Keywords:	biodiversity, biofuels, carbon emissions, China, climate change, deforestation, emerging pathogens, globalization, industrialization, tropical forests
Date Deposited:	23 Jan 2014 04:02
FoR Codes:	05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050202 Conservation and Biodiversity @ 100%
SEO Codes:	96 ENVIRONMENT > 9608 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity > 960899 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity of Environments not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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