Effects of reforestation on biodiversity in Brazilian Amazon
Collaborating with Mombak, reforesting thousands of hectares across the Braziilian Amazon in the State of Pará, Brazil, we are working to assess the effect of reforestation on biodiversity of degraded tropical forest ecosystems.
Using point-counting, acoustics, camera-trapping and eDNA approaches, we primarily focus on three objectives:
- how baseline biodiversity varies across landscapes in the area before reforestation;
- how does biodiversity change at different timepoints post-reforestation; and
- whether biodiversity in reforested sites is getting more similar to pristine status of biodiversity.
The macroecology of landscape ecology
Following Orme et al. 2019, Betts et al. 2019 and Banks-Leite et al. 2022 papers, we are investigating how responses to deforestation vary both within and between species. Recent evidence indicates that macroecological factors play a key role in driving this variation.
Some of the main topics we are studying include:
- how does a population’s position within its species’ geographic range affect its sensitivity to deforestation? Specifically, how might sensitivity to deforestation vary depending on proximity to different types of range edges, such as inland vs. coastal range edges and poleward- vs. equatorward-facing range edges? For more information, see: Granville et al. 2025.
- how drives climate drive variation in responses to deforestation?
- what is the relative importance of different drivers of variation in responses to deforestation?
- how does incorporating intraspecific variation in population responses to deforestation affect projections of biodiversity change?