Tropical forests in the Anthropocene: from ecological responses to management

CASUAL SEMINAR IN BIODIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION 

Many of the guidelines regarding tropical forest management in sustainable-use or strictly-protected reserves focus on local issues within the area of interest itself, such as setting offtake limits for game or timber and defining the spatial configuration and extent of no-take zones. Yet tropical forests face a period of unprecedented environmental change. This talk will explore recent evidence of those changes, highlighting the role of multiple interacting threats from climate change, climate shocks, and human land-uses outside of the forest itself - assessing their role in determining biodiversity loss, changing forest composition and limiting forest recovery. Finally, it will explore ways in which management strategies can be modified to more effectively integrate multiple stakeholders across the landscape, and outline ways in which the scientific and practitioner communities can work together to incorporate global environmental change into forest management.

Jos Barlow has been studying Amazonian forests since 1998. He has a PhD in Ecology, and joined Lancaster University in 2007. He is a visiting professor at the Universidade Federal de Lavras in Brazil, Executive Editor of the Journal of Applied Ecology, and one of the co-founders of the Rede Amazonia Sustentavel, which aims to produce and apply scientific evidence to enhance sustainability in the Amazon region.

[Host: Pedro Beja, Applied Ecology]