Oil palm plantations in an aging agricultural landscape in the eastern Amazon: Pushing Amazon forests farther from biodiversity-friendly landscapes

Abstract

Oil palm plantations across the tropics are intended to promote sustainable production by incorporating degraded lands while sparing old-growth forests. Here, we examine the trajectory of an Amazonian-forest focal landscape as it experiences the expansion of oil palm and its interactions with multiple land-uses. Land-use composition, landscape spatial configuration and structure in a 765.65-km2 watershed were examined over a 16-yr period (2002–2018) via Landsat imagery. Briefly, (1) old-growth forest coverage dropped from 37.3 % to 18.3 % across the whole landscape, (2) secondary forest and arable fields expanded until 2014, and (3) oil palm plantations emerged in 2010 with a positive trend thereafter, resulting in an 11.9 % expansion until 2018. In 2018, only 140.7 km2 of old-growth forest persisted, while oil palm plantations covered 91.8 km2. Oil palm expansion resulted from 14 land-use trajectories, with changes involving old-growth forests accounting for half the area (48.1 %) covered by plantations in 2018. However, only 0.4 % of the plantation area resulted from a direct conversion of old-growth forests. Landscape structure became increasingly degraded, which included the elimination of gallery forests, the proliferation of edge-affected habitats and the collapse of forest structural connectivity. Our results suggest that the eastern Amazon is still experiencing forest loss and exhibit highly dynamic land-use changes. Furthermore, landscapes continue to suffer degradation of key attributes related to biodiversity persistence and the provision of ecosystem services. Oil palm plantations have a catalytic effect on land-use dynamics, speeding up forest shrinking and landscape degradation. The oil palm sector requires a better governance based on guidelines able to guarantee either the persistence or the emergence of biodiversity-friendly landscapes.