Dynamics of tree populations were studied from 1992 to 1995 in 4 ha permanent plots placed both in a natural and a disturbed tropical seasonal forest in Mae Klong Watershed Research Station, Kanchanaburi, Western Thailand. In the natural forest, the recruitment, mortality, gain and loss rate in basal area (trees > 5 cm dbh) during the first 2 years were 10.50 % yr-1, 1.52 % yr-1 and 1.51 % yr-1, respectively. High recruitment rate compared with the other temperate and tropical forests (ca. 1-2 % yr-1) was caused by the death of a bamboo species a few years before. Forest fires which occured after that also affected the high recruitment rate. The spatial pattern of recruited trees was concentrated at the area where the bamboo died and the forest fire occured. In a disturbed forest, the recruitment, mortality, gain and loss rate in basal area during 3 years were in the range of 25.8 – 51.7 % yr-1, 6.9 – 55.5 % yr-1, 41 – 64 % yr-1 and 5.6 – 57.6 % yr-1, respectively. Higher recruitment and growth rate of trees in a disturbed forest compared with those in a natural forest greatly contributed to the recovery of forest biomass. Contrary to the annualy stable gain in basal area, mortality rate and loss rate in basal area were highly variable among years caused by the opportunistic occurence of fire. Fire regime greatly affects the dynamics both in a natural forest and a disturbed forest.
Tag: Communities
Bugis settlers in East Kalimantan’s Kutai National Park: their past and present and some possibilities for their future
What policies should be adopted regarding enclave populations in national parks and other protected areas and how should the policies be implemented? These questions are important for protected areas throughout the world. Andrew P. Vayda and Ahmad Sahur report here on socio-economic and historical research that they conducted in the rapidly industrialising Indonesian province of East Kalimantan to help deal with such questions. They use their findings to make practical recommendations about relocating Bugis farmers and fishers from East Kalimantan’s Kutai National Park and to assess relocation as an alternative to maintaining the status quo with respect to settlements within the Park’s lowland rainforest. In addition, their findings are used to challenge some widely held generalisations about the impoverished condition of forest settlers, the preferability of land to only cash to those who might be resettled, and the inter-relations between urban/industrial employment and forest destruction. The report is methodologically interesting as well. It shows how data collection and analysis may be guided by the goal of obtaining causal histories of events (including such events as forest-clearing in particular places at particular times and past changes in work and residence by settlers in the National Park). It shows how data collection and analysis, thus guided, may lead to significant research findings not obtained by investigators using rapid appraisal and standard survey methods and pre-set questionnaires. Also featured in the report are some methodological reflections on the value and limitations of applying general knowledge and cultural information, and on the need for information about particular historical events, in studies like Vayda and Sahur’s. In their research in and around Kutai National Park in 1996, Vayda and Sahur were resuming a collaboration begun in East Kalimantan sixteen years earlier. Andrew P. Vayda is Professor of Anthropology and Ecology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, and was, at the time of the research reported here, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at CIFOR. Ahmad Sahur lectures in anthropology at Hasanuddin University, Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and serves there also as an assistant dean.
Forest tenure reform: new resource rights for forest-based communities?
The introduction of participatory forestry management (PFM) in Kenya has led to the formation of community forest associations (CFAs). Data collected from 12 forests over a decade indicate that most associations are confederating to manage shared forests through the Forests Act of 2005. Emerging findings indicate that associations are responsible for diverse management activities in forest protection, monitoring, and management, yet access to decision-making, revenue streams, and overall resource control rights are vested in the Kenya Forestry Service. Still, this is an improvement as CFAs perform most governance functions autonomously, including the crafting of resource harvesting rules, the choice of leadership, and conflict resolution. In order to balance community incentives with the burdens and responsibilities they bear, rights to revenue streams generated from forest resources must be shared with communities to ensure continued commitment to the PFM process. Furthermore, the viability of CFAs is threatened by power struggles, leadership wrangles, and the splintering of groups. Negotiation support to moderate conflicting interests, and strengthen internal conflict resolution and governance is necessary.
Assessing the role of learning devices and geovisualisation tools for collective action in natural resource management: Experiences from Vietnam
In northern Vietnam uplands the successive policy reforms that accompanied agricultural decollectivisation triggered very rapid changes in land use in the 1990s. From a centralized system of natural resource management, a multitude of individual strategies emerged which contributed to new production interactions among farming households, changes in landscape structures, and conflicting strategies among local stakeholders. Within this context of agrarian transition, learning devices can help local communities to collectively design their own course of action towards sustainable natural resource management. This paper presents a collaborative approach combining a number of participatory methods and geovisualisation tools (e.g., spatially explicit multi-agent models and role-playing games) with the shared goal to analyse and represent the interactions between: (i) decision-making processes by individual farmers based on the resource profiles of their farms; (ii) the institutions which regulate resource access and usage; and (iii) the biophysical and socioeconomic environment. This methodological pathway is illustrated by a case study in Bac Kan Province where it successfully led to a communication platform on natural resource management. In a context of rapid socioeconomic changes, learning devices and geovisualisation tools helped embed the participatory approach within a process of community development. The combination of different tools, each with its own advantages and constraints, proved highly relevant for supporting collective natural resource management.
Recognising community rights: the potential and challenges of forest tenure reform
Non-timber forest product gathering in Ritigala forest (Sri Lanka): household strategies and community differentiation
Tree size predicts vascular epiphytic richness of traditional cultivated tea plantations in southwestern China
Species–area relationship has been widely addressed on many plant communities, but very few have conducted on epiphytic communities. Epiphytic plants are plentiful on ancient tea trees (Camelia sinensis var. assamica) in the well-known Jingmai tea plantation area, Langcang region of Yunnan Province, SW China, and add to the plant community biodiversity. We investigated 343 tea trees with various ground diameter, canopy area, under branch height, and tree height. A total of 146 vascular epiphytic plants, belonging to 19 species in seven families were recorded from the trunk or branches of 93 (27.11%) investigated trees. We examined in situ abundance, richness, and diversity (Shannon–Weiner index) of the recorded vascular epiphytes, and their relationships to tree variables. Our results showed that the distribution (abundance, richness, and diversity) of epiphytic plants are significantly related to the canopy area (p<0.05) and basal diameter (p<0.0001) of tea trees, supporting their use as key factors and good predictor for the epiphyte’s appearance in this type of agro-ecosystems. We also concluded that the species–area relationship is a useful epiphytic species community research tool.
Empowering communities to manage natural resources: where does the new power lie?: a case study of Duru-Haitemba, Babati, Tanzania
Recent approaches to community-based natural resource management appear as diverse as their varied implementing agencies and natural resource settings; yet they rest on a set of common assumptions about community, natural resources and the relationship between them. This paper focuses on power relations between local actors and how these set the framework for resource management in Duru-Haitemba. As one of the few remaining tracts of Miombo woodlands, the Duru-Haitemba had been targeted for gazzettment. However the exercise faced ‘local discontent’, originating in the ‘generalized narrative’. Before colonial powers the community lived in balanced harmony with nature, which when disrupted led to disequilibrium and hence degradation. A range of factors may account for this, including: technological change; breakdown of traditional authority; social change; urban aspirations and intrusion of inappropriate state policies. The community and environment should be brought back into harmony. This requires either the discovery and rebuilding of traditional collective resource management institutions or their replacement by new ones. At the local level the elites and the traditionalists compete for power: The primary concern of traditionalists is ‘ritual’. Elites tend to hijack community-based processes and forcefully occupy the political space opened by decentralisation. Besides power struggles at the micro level, another challenge is the government leadership at the macro level. Government officials usually have very mixed feelings about community actions but increasingly are realising that community action can be substituted for the expensive exercise of putting government officials in the field. The paper points out that community-based natural resource management is a plausible way to reduce public costs of managing resources. However, the power struggle between local communities, field agents and supervisors remains. This ‘triangle’ of relationships constitutes the social arena marking out the actual ‘locale’ of community based natural resource management in Duru-Haitemba.
Balancing supply and demand: A case study of rattan in the Danau Sentarum national park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia
The Danau Sentarum National Park (DSNP), Kalimantan, Indonesia, covers 30 000 ha of lake and 81 000 ha of lowland, seasonally flooded forest. It is the largest network of inland lakes in Borneo. The park is inhabited by over 5500 Malay fishermen. Most of the fishing implements used by the local population are made from rattan, and large quantities of rattan are also harvested and sold to timber companies for lashing together rafts of logs. The 3 most commonly used species at DSNP are duri antu (Calamus schistoacanthus), duri tapah (Calamus tapa) and duri pelanduk (Ceratolobus hallierianus). Inventories indicate that the 3 rattans differ greatly in the number of harvestable clumps/ha (>4.0 m tall). The duri antu populations average over 900 clumps/ha, duri pelanduk grows at densities of 400-500 clumps/ha, and duri tapah averages only 50 clumps/ha. Based on the observed relationship between clump height and the number of canes/clump, it is estimated that there are over 34 000 duri antu canes/ha growing in the flooded forest of DSNP. An analysis of local demand, productivity and current harvest intensities reveals that local rattan resources are being gradually overexploited. Several fishing communities have started to manage their rattan resources by controlling harvests and rehabilitating and enriching natural stands.