🦍 In Southeast Asia Many Forests Have Been

SEATTLE, Washington — During the Vietnam War, the United States used a defoliant chemical called Agent Orange to expose the Vietnamese military positioned within thick forests. Between 1961-1971, the U.S. sprayed around 80 million liters of Agent Orange primarily across Vietnam's Southern country-side regions. According to the Los Angeles Almanac there are approximately 27,015homeless people With high carbon density, the forests of Southeast Asia have been a critical focus of programs such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and land Degradation), which is designed to incentivize forest conservation by transferring funds from developed to developing countries for carbon storage and ecosystem services that we all benefit New Forests has operated in Southeast Asia since 2008 and launched the first institutional Southeast Asia forestry fund. We are the only global forestry investment manager with a dedicated presence in the region. Southeast Asia is exposed to rising regional demand for timber products, correlated with growing wood products manufacturing and The tropical forests of Southeast Asia are under immense pressure. This tropical forest region has lost a large proportion of its original forest cover and is now a deforestation hotspot [7]. Over In Southeast Asia, many forests have been cut down to produce timber and to clear land for farms and industries. The destruction of forests has reduced the habitat of wildlife. Much of Asia's wildlife is also threatened by poaching. Many people kill animals for food or hunt them to sell to zoo, medical researchers, and pet traders. In Southeast Asian, many forests have been cut down to produce timber and to clear land for farms and industries. The destruction of forests has reduced the living space of wildlife. Much of Asian's wildlife is also threatened by over-hunting. Many people kill animals for food or hunt them to sell to the zoo, medical research, and pet trader. The scientists estimated that between 2000 and 2014, Southeast Asia lost 293,000 square kilometers (113,100 square miles) of forest, more than 11 per cent of the total forest cover in 1999. Southern Blues Tattoos 1901 S Jupiter Rd (Assett), Garland, TX Tattoo Parlor · 4 tips and reviews Tatt Ooz: We have over 20 years of Professional Tattooing Experience. There are 1000'nds of Tattoo Designs to choose from, or, bring your own Idea and let us help you create your Custom Piece. Southeast Asia's forests, from 2005 to 2015, have lost over 80 million hectares—one-third—causing a loss of 4.5% of Aboveground Forest Carbon Stocks (AFCS). Indonesia and Malaysia are leading the way for forest clearance and land conversions to agriculture and palm oil plantations. bRJNg3. New research has found that the tropical forests in the mountains of Southeast Asia are losing trees at an accelerated rate, deepening a wide range of ecological concerns. Southeast Asia is home to about 15% of the world’s tropical forests and help sustain plant and animal biodiversity. The trees also store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would further contribute to warming global temperatures. But clearing the forests of trees has reduced the ecosystem’s capacity for carbon storage, according to a study recently published in Nature Sustainability. In many parts of the world, people have cleared out forests to make space for subsistence agriculture and cash crops. In Southeast Asia, illegal logging is also responsible for a huge amount of deforestation. As forests shrink, their ability to counteract human carbon emissions dwindles. “We know there is substantial deforestation on mountains [in Southeast Asia], but we didn’t know if it was increasing and how it affected carbon,” said Zhenzhong Zeng, an earth system scientist at Southern University of Science and Technology in China and a co-author of the study. “Now, we find that it’s increasing.” The researchers used satellite images to track forest loss over time and carbon density maps to calculate corresponding reductions in carbon storage capacity. Their results showed that Southeast Asia has lost 61 million hectares of forest over the last 20 years. In the 2000s, the annual loss was about an average of 2 million hectares a year. Between 2010 to 2019, that number doubled to about 4 million hectares a year. “I think what’s surprising is just the rate that it’s occurring at, and not the fact that it is occurring,” said Alan Ziegler, a physical geographer at Mae Jo University in Thailand and another co-author of the study. About a third of trees cleared were in mountainous regions such as northern Laos, northeastern Myanmar and the Indonesian islands Sumatra and Kalimantan, the study found. Experts previously thought that these trees, protected by rugged mountain landscape, would be less affected by human intervention compared to trees found in flatter lowlands. But the study found that with cultivatable lowlands growing more limited, forest clearance has expanded into the mountains. In 2001, mountain trees made up about 24% of all trees cleared that year. By 2019, it was over 40%. FILE - A view of Khao Yai National Park, 130 kilometers north of Bangkok, Thailand, March 22, 2021. “I think it’s innovative, the way they look at how [forest loss] shifts from lowland areas to the mountain areas,” said Nophea Sasaki, who studies forest carbon monitoring at Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and was not involved in the study. “I think that’s a great concern.” Forests at higher elevation and on steeper slopes tend to store more carbon than lowland forests, according to the study. If people are clearing out more mountain trees, then the forests could lose even more carbon than current climate change models predict. If land is set aside, trees can regrow and restore their carbon stocks. But the natural habitats forests support and the great biodiversity they contain may be lost forever. Species unique to the region could disappear. The forests’ protection of watersheds and flood prevention capacity may also vanish. “It’s not only about carbon. In terms of environmental destruction on a long-term basis, it would destroy nature. It would destroy all biodiversity,” Sasaki said. Complicating the picture is inconsistent monitoring and enforcement of forest protection between countries and states. Experts say advances in technology, such as the satellite data used in this study, and public attention on the issue will be important for closer monitoring and prevention of forest loss. “We should be obligated to protect the forest because without these forests, we cannot survive,” Sasaki said. Loading metrics Open Access Peer-reviewed Research Article Takuya Furukawa , Riyou Tsujino, Shumpei Kitamura, Takakazu Yumoto Factors affecting forest area change in Southeast Asia during 1980-2010 Nobuo Imai, Takuya Furukawa, Riyou Tsujino, Shumpei Kitamura, Takakazu Yumoto x Published May 15, 2018 Figures AbstractWhile many tropical countries are experiencing rapid deforestation, some have experienced forest transition FT from net deforestation to net reforestation. Numerous studies have identified causative factors of FT, among which forest scarcity has been considered as a prerequisite for FT. In fact, in SE Asia, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, which experienced FT since 1990, exhibited a lower remaining forest area 30±8% than the other five countries 68±6%, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar where forest loss continues. In this study, we examined 1 the factors associated with forest scarcity, 2 the proximate and/or underlying factors that have driven forest area change, and 3 whether causative factors changed across FT phases from deforestation to net forest gain during 1980–2010 in the eight SE Asian countries. We used production of wood, food, and export-oriented food commodities as proximate causes and demographic, social, economic and environmental factors, as well as land-use efficiency, and wood and food trade as underlying causes that affect forest area change. Remaining forest area in 1990 was negatively correlated with population density and potential land area of lowland forests, while positively correlated with per capita wood production. This implies that countries rich in accessible and productive forests, and higher population pressures are the ones that have experienced forest scarcity, and eventually FT. Food production and agricultural input were negatively and positively correlated, respectively, with forest area change during 1980–2009. This indicates that more food production drives deforestation, but higher efficiency of agriculture is correlated with forest gain. We also found a U-shaped response of forest area change to social openness, suggesting that forest gain can be achieved in both open and closed countries, but deforestation might be accelerated in countries undergoing societal transition. These results indicate the importance of environmental, agricultural and social variables on forest area dynamics, and have important implications for predicting future tropical forest change. Citation Imai N, Furukawa T, Tsujino R, Kitamura S, Yumoto T 2018 Factors affecting forest area change in Southeast Asia during 1980-2010. PLoS ONE 135 e0197391. Krishna Prasad Vadrevu, University of Maryland at College Park, UNITED STATESReceived January 5, 2018; Accepted May 1, 2018; Published May 15, 2018Copyright © 2018 Imai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are Availability All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information This study was financially supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund S9-1 of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan, and the “International Program of Collaborative Research” funded by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies CSEAS, Kyoto University to NI, and the "Project to support activities for promoting REDD+ by private companies and nongovernmental organizations" funded by the Forestry Agency of Japan to TF. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the interests The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. IntroductionAlteration of land use is one of the major causes of global environmental change which is driving species to extinction and emitting increasing amount of green-house gases. In particular, global deforestation rate is still alarmingly high[1], and the tropics are the only biome to exhibit an increasing trend of forest cover loss in the 21st-century[2]. Deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics are responsible for 7–14% of anthropogenic carbon emissions[3] and pose one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity[4]. Therefore, reducing tropical deforestation and even reversing the trend to net forest gain are top priorities of global environmental policy. While many tropical countries are experiencing ongoing deforestation, some have gone through a transition from net deforestation to net reforestation, as known as “forest transition FT”[5]. The FT hypothesis explains forest recovery as a result of abandonment of marginal agricultural land followed by forest regeneration, as well as tree plantation[6][7][8]. Economic development is almost a prerequisite of FT[9][10][11][12][13][14][15], but different pathways have been suggested on how it affects forest recovery. The wealth brought by economic development would enable tropical countries to be financially comfortable enough to invest in reforestation schemes[16] or import wood and food products from other countries while preserving its own forest[13][14][17][18] [19][20]. Economic development may also change the demographic pattern of a country decrease in rural population with the increase in urban population through the increase in off-farm employment, which leads to cropland abandonment[5]. Improvement in agricultural productivity is also suggested to encourage abandonment of marginal croplands[21]. Although it may not be a direct result of economic development, democratic societies[22][23][24] or countries with better governance[15][25][26] are suggested to show less deforestation and/or more forest recovery. Despite the diversity of socio-economic factors that have been suggested to be related to FT, most studies have employed a limited number of factors in their analysis. Additionally, various environmental conditions, such as precipitation, temperature, vegetation, and topography, are known to affect forest area change at the local to subnational scales[27][28][29], but their effects have rarely been incorporated in national-scale studies. Exhaustion of forest resources is also considered as a prerequisite of a country to experience FT. When forests become scarce, the need for forest conservation is realized with rising price of forest products, or forest protection is promoted in order to restore the deteriorated forest ecosystem services[30][31][32]. Rudel et al. 2005[31] pointed out that this “forest scarcity pathway” could be more prominent in densely populated Asian countries, compared to less populous Latin American countries. In southeast Asia, forest area stopped to decline in Thailand and increased in the Philippines and Viet Nam since 1990, but the other five SE Asian countries experienced forest loss during 1980–2010 Fig 1[1][33]. The three FT countries Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam exhibited lower remaining forest area 30±8%, mean±SD compared to the other five SE Asian countries 68±6%, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar as of 1990 Fig 1. This implies that forest scarcity per se may have led to FT in the three countries. Although the pattern and processes of FT in the three countries have been well studied[6][14] [34][35][36], clarifying why the three particular countries, but not the other five countries, have already exhausted their forest resources and experienced FT would lead to a better understanding of the entering point of the forest scarcity pathway. Grainger[7] suggested that, during the FT process, mechanisms underlying the deforestation phase and the subsequent reforestation phase are not identical. However, recent studies reported that factors associated with forest area change are consistent during both deforestation and reforestation phases, while relative importance of each factor varied among phases[15][37]. This implies that there might be a common mechanism across the FT phases, in which a socio-economic factor might initially accelerate deforestation, but then encourage reforestation. Such process could be a key to not only reduce deforestation but also enhance forest recovery. SE Asia used to experience the fastest rate of deforestation among the tropics especially until the 1990s[38]. Smallholders supported by recolonization programs by the state were considered the main driver of deforestation up to the 1980s, but their role was replaced by private enterprise agriculture until the 1990s[39]. Deforestation continued during the 1990s and 2000s in the region but with a slower rate because of reversing trends in forest area in Thailand, the Philippines, and Viet Nam Fig 1[1]. Displacement of deforestation to other countries through timber imports played a big role to achieve forest recovery in Viet Nam[34][35]. Expansion of oil-palm plantation has been one of the major causes of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia during this period[39][40]. In Myanmar, commercial agricultural concession, timber extraction and infrastructure development, underlain by international investment, civil war and weak land tenure, were identified as the major drivers of deforestation[41]. To elucidate the general process of FT in SE Asia, we employed 33 socio-economic factors pertaining to proximate production of wood, food, wood and food aggregated, and export-oriented food commodities and underlying causes demographic, social, economic and environmental factors, as well as land-use efficiency, and wood and food trade of deforestation in eight SE Asian countries at the national scale during 1980–2010. We also examined the relationship between percentage forest area and these causative factors in 1990 to understand the conditions leading to forest scarcity. We addressed three specific questions; 1 what are the socio-economic conditions that lead a country to enter the forest scarcity pathway, 2 which proximate and/or underlying factors have the most significant impacts on forest area change, and 3 whether the relationship with the identified causative factors change across the FT phases from deforestation to net forest gain? Methods Data collection This study covered eight southeast Asian countries, namely, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, encompassing 3 decades 1980–2009 divided into four periods 1980–1989, 1990–1999, 2000–2004 and 2005–2009. All countries were analyzed together to extract common mechanisms underlying the entering point of the forest scarcity pathway and the process across the FT phases. Data on remaining forest area % and the rate of change in forest area % yr-1 were obtained from the Global Forest Resources Assessment FRA data on the 1980s were from FRA 1990[33] and data on the 1990s and onward were from FRA 2010[1]. FRA’s forest area data have been criticized for being variable in quality across countries and for inconsistencies in definitions[42], but it remains the sole comprehensive source of national deforestation rates prior to 2000 see Hansen et al. 2013[2]. We used data on wood and food production as the proximate causes of forest area change. Instead of using production volume, we converted the values into per capita land area required to produce the products km2 person-1 yr-1 in order to account for the difference in land use impacts difference in land area required to produce the same volume of different products. Details of the calculation process is provided in Kastner et al. 2014[43] and the Supporting Information S1 Text. This calculation enabled us to directly compare and aggregate the production impact of different wood and food products under the same unit. Wood production covered industrial roundwood including derived products. Food production encompassed almost 450 crops and livestock products, including ten major crops and two groups of commodity crops of interest, namely, oil palm and stimulants coffee and cocoa. As for the underlying driving forces of forest area change, we considered demographic, economic, social, and environmental variables, as well as land-use efficiency, and wood and food trade. Demographic variables included population density person km-2, rural, urban and total annual population growth rates % yr-1, and percentage of urban population Panels a-d in S7 Fig. Economic variables included GDP per capita PPP adjusted, current international USD, GDP growth rate % yr-1, level of industrialization represented by the share of manufacturing industry % of GDP, headcount poverty ratio at USD per day % of population, forest rents % of GDP, total natural resources rents % of GDP, proportion of forest rents to total natural resources rents %, and the Human Development Index HDI, unitless Panels e-k in S7 Fig. Social variables included corruption and social openness Panels l and m in S2 Fig. The Corruption Perception Index CPI provided by Transparency International was used to represent corruption. Indices of polity and freedom, obtained from Polity IV regime authority characteristics and transitions datasets, INSCR and Freedom in the world, Freedom House respectively, were summarized based on principal component analysis PCA, and the score of its first axis was used to represent social openness. Land-use efficiency included the index of agricultural input unitless, cereal yield Hg ha-1, and the index of agricultural yield unitless Panels n-p in S2 Fig. Agricultural input was represented by the first axis of PCA among agricultural machines import, pesticides import and fertilizers consumption per unit agricultural area. Similarly, the yield values of major crops were summarized by PCA to represent agricultural yield. The self-sufficiency ratios SSR, unitless for wood, food, and wood and food aggregated were used as the indices of wood and food trade. The SSR was defined as The SSR was calculated based on land area required for wood and food production S3 Fig, and area associated with import/export of wood and food in the eight countries S4 and S5 Figs. Data on import/export values of food were obtained from Kastner et al. 2014[43], while those of wood were calculated based on various data sources see S1 Text. Environmental variables included remaining forest area at the beginning of each period %, median elevation m, total land area km2, and percentage land area of lowland tropical forests as potential natural vegetation %. Characteristics of climate and soil summarized based on PCA analyses S1 Text were also used in the analyses. All variables used in the analyses are listed in Table 1. The data sources and details of the calculation processes are described in S1 Text. Statistical analyses For all the 33 variables of proximate and underlying causes Table 1, we calculated the mean values in each of the four periods 1980–1989, 1990–1999, 2000–2004 and 2005–2009. We first examined the relationships between percentage forest area in 1990, when forest area in Philippines and Viet Nam began to increase Fig 1, and the remaining 32 variables in the 1980s by Pearson’s correlation analysis. We then examined the relationships between the rate of change in forest area % yr-1 and the 33 variables. As a result, 10 out of 33 variables had a significant correlation with forest area change in at least one of the four periods S7 Fig and S3 Table; see Results. To further analyze the strength of each of the 10 causative factors on the rate of change in forest area during the four periods, we examined the explanatory power of major variables based on multiple regression analyses. We considered wood and food production individually instead of their aggregated values, and excluded headcount poverty ratio since it was not available for Myanmar. We also considered squared terms for variables that changed their correlation coefficient between positive and negative over time expecting that the variables might have altered their relationship with forest area during FT. The multi-collinearity of explanatory variables was examined based on variance inflation factor VIF. Variables having VIF ≥ 10 were dropped with preferential omission of squared terms to avoid severe multi-collinearity[44], leaving a total of 8 explanatory variables of which only one was a squared term. The full model with all explanatory variables was defined as where ΔFAi is the rate of change in forest area, FPi is per capita area required for food production, WPi per capita area required for wood production, POPi is population density, URBi is proportion of urban population, SOPi is social openness, AGIi is agricultural input, and WSSRi is wood SSR. β1~9 represent model coefficients intercept and slopes, εi is the error term, and i depicts data from each country and time period. Model selection was based on Akaike information criterion for small sample sizes AICc[45]. For each candidate model, we calculated AICc weight which value adds to 1 representing the normalized likelihood of a model in the set of candidate models[46]. The relative importance of variables IOV; values ranging from 0 to 1 was calculated by adding the AICc weights of the models in which a variable was selected [46]. All statistical analyses were performed using R[47]. Results Remaining forest area Only three out of 32 variables were significantly correlated with remaining forest area in 1990 P respectively. S1 Table. Results of the PCA analysis for social openness, agricultural input and yield in the eight SE Asian are the maximum absolute variable loadings among PCA axes in each variable. Only PCA axes that explained at least 10% of data variability are shown. S2 Table. Results of the PCA analysis for 19 climate and 12 soil variables in the eight SE Asian are the maximum absolute variable loadings among PCA axes in each variable. Only PCA axes that explained at least 10% of data variability are shown. Acknowledgments We are grateful to T. Kastner for providing the detailed data on production, import and export values of food commodities, E. Nakazono for GIS analysis, H. Samejima for trade analysis, S. Nishijima, T. Miyashita, T. Yahara and SE Asian JICA staffs for helpful discussion. References1. FAO. Global forest resources assessment 2010. 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Critically endangered means that the species may go extinct from the wild within the next 15 years. So yes; if more efforts are not made to protect them, at least two of the orangutan species may go extinct, and the third one could soon become critically endangered. The good news is that people throughout the world are becoming aware of the threat and making efforts to protect the orangutans. We’ll talk more about these conservation efforts a little later in this article. Why are Orangutans Endangered? Orangutan populations have seen massive declines in recent decades. You may be wondering why; what factors have caused their decline? There are several factors that play a role in falling orangutan numbers. Let’s take a look at those factors below. Deforestation Orangutans live in tropical forests and river valleys on a few islands in southeast Asia. Many of these forests have been destroyed to make room for palm plantations. Fires Part of the deforestation process involves burning large sections of forest at a time. Not only do these controlled burns kill much of the wildlife inside, but they can also easily spread to the forests around them and grow into large, uncontained wildfires. Illegal logging In forested regions that aren’t being cleared for plantations, illegal logging is a major problem. Even in protected areas, loggers will go in and cut down large numbers of trees, further reducing the orangutan’s available habitat. Poaching Though hunting orangutans is illegal, the big, slow animals are often targeted by poachers. Some orangutans are hunted for food; others, forced from their homes as their natural habitats disappear, are shot for encroaching on farming areas and eating crops. Pet trade In some regions, orangutans are in high demand as pets, though it is illegal to own or sell them. In the illegal pet trade, female orangutans are killed and their babies taken; and, according to the World Wildlife Fund “It is thought that for each orangutan reaching Taiwan, as many as 3-5 additional animals die in the process.” What Efforts are Being Made to Save Orangutans? As you can see from the above section, orangutans face many threats. It’s no wonder their populations are declining so rapidly. Fortunately, there are efforts being made to protect orangutans and restore their populations. Some of these efforts include Habitat conservation Local and international organizations are making efforts to reduce the number of forests being destroyed. Large areas of forest in southeast Asia are receiving legal protection against deforestation, burning, and logging; though some of these activities persist, they are not as prevalent in areas where they are illegal. Limiting pet trade Some organizations work to limit the pet trade by helping local governments enforce the laws already in place, make new laws, and rescue orangutans that have been illegally trafficked. The rescued orangutans are raised to adulthood or nursed back to health, eventually being released back into their native habitats. Monitoring populations Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund keep track of orangutan populations, making note of fluctuations from year to year and reporting any dangerous declines. By monitoring the actual numbers of orangutans found in the wild, we can better understand how conservation efforts are making a difference and changes that still need to be made. Public awareness Many organizations throughout the world are simply trying to get the word out about the plight of the orangutan. As more people learn about the problem, many will become more interested in getting involved and supporting the efforts already being made to correct it. Check out this video to learn more about the threats to orangutans and what is being done to protect these large primates. Conclusion Orangutans are found in forested areas of southeast Asia, where they face many threats in their natural habitats. Efforts are being made to protect and restore the three orangutan species, all of which are endangered and two of which are considered critically endangered.

in southeast asia many forests have been