Abstract
Worldwide, roads are a main driver of deforestation and degradation as they increase forest access along the forest edge. In many tropical areas, unofficial roads go unreported and unrecorded, resulting in inaccurate estimates of intact forested areas. This is the case in central Sumatra, which boasts populations of critically endangered Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatrensis), tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and other endemic flora and fauna that make the area globally unique. However, maps do not reflect the reality of forest loss in the area. Here we present new maps from 2002 and 2016 of digitized and ground-truthed roads in one of Sumatra’s unique lowland tropical protected areas, Tesso Nilo National Park. Using our newly created roads dataset, we examine the distribution of forest with respect to distance to roads. Our data show >2,400 km of roads within the national park in 2016 –nearly a 10-fold increase from roads known in 2002. Most forest (82–99%) within Tesso Nilo falls within 100 m, 500 m, and 1000 m of road edges. Length of road increased 157% and road density increased from 1.06 km/km2 to 2.63 km/km2 from 2002–2016. Our results suggest that this endemic ecosystem is facing substantial threat from roads and their associated impacts. Without swift management action, such as road closures and increased enforcements by park management, this ecosystem, and its endemic wildlife, could be lost. It is imperative that protected areas worldwide more rigorously consider roads and road effects on ecosystem fragmentation in their conservation plans.
Highlights
As forests are fragmented into smaller patches, biodiversity is lost directly as a result of forest clearing, and indirectly through increased forest access and illegal use of wildlife resources
In 2002, we identified 954 km of previously unrecorded roads via digitization within Tesso Nilo, 321.32 km of which were within forested areas (Fig 2)
Throughout the broader landscape (Fig 1), including Tesso Nilo, there were 409,602 forest patches with a mean size of 0.05 km2 compared to 403,414 natural forest patches with an average size of 0.02 km2 in 2016 (Fig 4) Total natural forest decreased from 20,837 km2–10,198 km2
Summary
As forests are fragmented into smaller patches, biodiversity is lost directly as a result of forest clearing, and indirectly through increased forest access and illegal use of wildlife resources. In the Amazon, extinction rates are negatively correlated with area of forest fragments [1, 2] and fragments 0.01–0.1 km in size lose species across taxa at a higher rate than fragments 1 km or greater [3,4,5,6]. Biodiversity is affected by the size of remnant forest patches, and by the distance to, and habitat between neighboring forest patches, which can play roles in biodiversity persistence in a disturbed landscape [7, 1]. Road impacts on biodiversity in Riau, Sumatra design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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