Ghost roads and the destruction of Asia-Pacific tropical forests.

Autor: Engert JE; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. engert_ecospatial@outlook.com., Campbell MJ; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia., Cinner JE; College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.; Thriving Oceans Research Hub, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia., Ishida Y; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia., Sloan S; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia.; Department of Geography, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada., Supriatna J; Research Center for Climate Change, and Department of Biology, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia., Alamgir M; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia., Cislowski J; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia., Laurance WF; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. bill.laurance@jcu.edu.au.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature [Nature] 2024 May; Vol. 629 (8011), pp. 370-375. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Apr 10.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07303-5
Abstrakt: Roads are expanding at the fastest pace in human history. This is the case especially in biodiversity-rich tropical nations, where roads can result in forest loss and fragmentation, wildfires, illicit land invasions and negative societal effects 1-5 . Many roads are being constructed illegally or informally and do not appear on any existing road map 6-10 ; the toll of such 'ghost roads' on ecosystems is poorly understood. Here we use around 7,000 h of effort by trained volunteers to map ghost roads across the tropical Asia-Pacific region, sampling 1.42 million plots, each 1 km 2 in area. Our intensive sampling revealed a total of 1.37 million km of roads in our plots-from 3.0 to 6.6 times more roads than were found in leading datasets of roads globally. Across our study area, road building almost always preceded local forest loss, and road density was by far the strongest correlate 11 of deforestation out of 38 potential biophysical and socioeconomic covariates. The relationship between road density and forest loss was nonlinear, with deforestation peaking soon after roads penetrate a landscape and then declining as roads multiply and remaining accessible forests largely disappear. Notably, after controlling for lower road density inside protected areas, we found that protected areas had only modest additional effects on preventing forest loss, implying that their most vital conservation function is limiting roads and road-related environmental disruption. Collectively, our findings suggest that burgeoning, poorly studied ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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