Plantation Landscape Research Articles

Synergistic effects of habitat configuration and land-use intensity shape the structure of bird assemblages in human-modified landscapes across three major neotropical biomes

Maximizing biodiversity persistence in heterogeneous human-modified landscapes is hindered by the complex interactions between habitat quality and configuration of native and non-native habitats. Here we examined these complex interactions considering avian diversity across 26 sampling sites, each of which comprised of three sampling points located across a gradient of disturbance: core native habitat fragment, fragment edge, and non-native adjacent matrix. The 78 sampling points were further nested within three neotropical biomes—Amazonia, Cerrado and Pantanal—in central-western Brazil. Matrix type consisted of cattle pastures in the Amazon and teak plantations in the Pantanal and Cerrado. We considered the interactive effects of (1) disturbance-context: fragment core, edge and adjacent matrix, (2) matrix type: tree plantation or cattle pastures, both subject to varying land-use intensity, and (3) native habitat configuration (fragment size, shape and isolation) on bird species richness, abundance and composition. Based on point-count surveys, we recorded 210 bird species. Bird species richness and abundance declined across the disturbance gradient, while genus composition only differed within the adjacent matrix, particularly cattle-pastures. The effect of native habitat area was positive but only detected at fragment edges. Overall bird diversity increased at sites characterized by higher availability of either relict trees within pasture landscapes or old-growth trees within teak plantation landscapes. The core of native fragments played a primary role in ensuring the persistence of bird diversity, regardless of fragment size. In contrast to pastures, tree plantations likely harbour a higher proportion of forest-dependent species while bird diversity can be further enhanced by reduced management intensity in both matrix types. Strategies to maximize avian persistence should not only include retaining native habitats, but also maximizing the size of core native habitats. Likewise, more structurally complex matrix types should be encouraged while maintaining low levels of land-use intensity.

Visual characteristics of the tea plantation landscape in Wazuka town as a suburban rural area

Wazuka town is located in the southeastern part of Kyoto prefecture and is known as a tea plantation production area. The landscape created by the livelihood has been inherited. This study aimed to show the visual characteristics of the tea plantation landscape in Wazuka town from the viewpoint of visitors and obtain basic knowledge on the enhancement of landscape planning and revitalization of suburban rural area. First, based on the impression evaluation of the tea plantation landscape through a photo projective method, factor and cluster analyses were performed. The first factor was interpreted as the “openness” and the second factor as the “uniqueness”. Second, in classifying landscape photographs, four types were shown: high openness, high uniqueness, moderate openness and uniqueness, and low openness and uniqueness. Third, the relationship between the types of landscape photography and landscape components was analyzed. In conclusion, it was shown that the tea plantation occupancy rate is approximately 60％ or more as a landscape, which has the uniqueness of a tea plantation. Moreover, it was shown the uniqueness of a tea plantation, in cases of the upward view and where the tea plantation occupancy rate is high on the slope, regarding the landscape where the tea plantation occupancy rate is less than 60％.

Locating 'Coolie' Women's Health in Tea Plantation Environments in Colonial Assam

Abstract The history of Assam tea plantations in India is well-documented, yet a gender sensitive environmental history of these colonially-introduced plantation landscapes is absent. The colonial tea planters saw advantages in a growing female presence in their plantations, in terms of increased male ties to the plantation, lower wages for female workers and the added benefit of biological reproduction that would fulfil the need for manual labour in these plantations for generations. This paper attempts to understand how this plantation structure in general and the work regime in particular relied on a particular type of gender identity, which in turn had a detrimental effect on the health of the women labourers in this new landscape.

Modeling impacts of broad-scale plantation forestry on ecosystem services in the past 60 years and for the future

Although forestry plantations dominate landscapes in many parts of the world, effects of plantation forestry on various ecosystem services (ESs) remain unknown. Here, we modeled 10 forest ESs as functions of forest type (natural forest vs. plantation), stand age, and environmental covariates to systematically evaluate ESs of plantation landscapes in central Japan. Our models showed that although three ESs including biodiversity conservation and amenity service are greatly reduced by replacing natural forests with plantations, other ESs show small changes or even increase when stand age is accounted for. Five ESs increase and four decrease with stand age in both forest types. Model application to the study area in the past 60 years suggested that many ESs were greatly reduced when or immediately after vast plantations were established. Two ESs (biodiversity conservation and amenity service) have not sufficiently recovered despite forests’ reaching maturity. ESs dependent on early-successional stage showed precipitous recent declines. Scenario analysis suggests that increasing timber production while avoiding harvesting steep slopes would not increase landslide susceptibility. Furthermore, restoration of natural forests in flat areas near roads would greatly improve biodiversity conservation and amenity services. Landscape management will determine whether plantations deliver net benefits to current and future generations.

Activity and Ranging Behavior of Leopard Cats (Prionailurus bengalensis) in an Oil Palm Landscape

The leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) is the most widespread feline in Asia. It has been recorded in a range of habitats, including monoculture landscapes, such as oil palm plantations. Here, we report on a study on the presence, home range, activity patterns and diet of the species in an oil palm landscape to assess their viability as biological pest controller of rats. The study took place in United Plantations/PT SSS estate in Central Kalimantan, Borneo, Indonesia. From July 2014 to March 2018, we captured 11 leopard cats in purpose-built cage-traps and fitted them with VHF radio-transmitters. They were tracked for a 44 months study period, during which we collected a total of 2.031 GPS locations used for estimating the respective cats’ activities and home-ranges. The cats are strictly nocturnal and prefer to hide and rest in thick bush, primarily consisting of sword-fern (Nephrolepis sp.) during day-time, but forage both on the ground and in the palm canopy at night. The average home range (95% FK) for male leopard cats is 1.47 km2 (n = 7; SD = 0.62 km2) with slightly smaller home range for females at 1.29 km2 (n = 4; SD = 0.28 km2). All individuals studied were recorded strictly within the oil palm plantation landscape, although mangrove forest habitat makes up 7% of the greater plantation landscape. In conclusion, leopard cats survive and reproduce well in oil palm habitats and are effective biological controllers of rats that can replace the traditionally used expensive and environmentally polluting chemical rat poisons.

Permeability of commercial landscapes: integrating plantation forest trackways into ecological networks

ContextReconnecting fragmented habitat is a major challenge in biodiversity conservation. It is especially important in landscapes that have undergone significant change through agriculture and forestry conversion. This is particularly prevalent within heathland regions across Western Europe where remaining fragments are significantly isolated in intensely managed landscapes.ObjectivesThis study examines to what extent forest trackways can facilitate connectivity between open patches, and how invertebrate dispersal ability (terrestrial or aerial) influences functional landscape connectivity. We also investigate a range of management scenarios to examine the efficacy of landscape management plans to facilitate connectivity for vulnerable invertebrate communities.MethodsWe develop the Path-Cost Index (PCI) that combines multiple environmental factors to quantify species-specific habitat suitability within forestry trackways. The PCI generates dispersal cost values for resistance-based connectivity models that represent specific forest environments and species/guild responses. We demonstrate the use of this index through the modelling of least-cost pathways for heathland invertebrates and test management scenarios (clustered and contiguous habitat improvements) developed to support heathland biodiversity.ResultsThe plantation landscape provided significant barriers for vulnerable heathland invertebrate guilds. Landscape metrics indicate that management plans incorporating contiguous corridors would provide significantly greater improvements over clustered corridors for target invertebrate guilds in our study landscape.ConclusionThe PCI presented in this study delivered easily definable resistance costs allowing comparative assessment of landscape enhancements plans. The PCI can be easily adapted to other linear features and landscapes, affording a low-cost tool to assist the evaluation of management plans and biological networks.

Recovery of logged forest fragments in a human-modified tropical landscape during the 2015-16 El Ni\xf1o

The past 40 years in Southeast Asia have seen about 50% of lowland rainforests converted to oil palm and other plantations, and much of the remaining forest heavily logged. Little is known about how fragmentation influences recovery and whether climate change will hamper restoration. Here, we use repeat airborne LiDAR surveys spanning the hot and dry 2015-16 El Niño Southern Oscillation event to measure canopy height growth across 3,300 ha of regenerating tropical forests spanning a logging intensity gradient in Malaysian Borneo. We show that the drought led to increased leaf shedding and branch fall. Short forest, regenerating after heavy logging, continued to grow despite higher evaporative demand, except when it was located close to oil palm plantations. Edge effects from the plantations extended over 300 metres into the forests. Forest growth on hilltops and slopes was particularly impacted by the combination of fragmentation and drought, but even riparian forests located within 40 m of oil palm plantations lost canopy height during the drought. Our results suggest that small patches of logged forest within plantation landscapes will be slow to recover, particularly as ENSO events are becoming more frequent.

Plantation Landscapes and the Colonial Legacy in V. S. Naipaul’s The Middle Passage

Plantation Landscapes and the Colonial Legacy in V. S. Naipaul’s The Middle Passage

The wet frontier of slavery: plantation slavery and freedom on Texas’ Trinity River

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Texas’ Trinity River to show how the South’s smaller rivers enabled the spread of plantation slavery in the final decades of the antebellum era. Unlike other histories of slavery that argue that the domination of slaves linked with mastery over cotton crops or a hydraulic landscape, on the Trinity the plantation landscape reflected planters’ lack of control over the river. Planters’ disinterest in mastering the environment on the wet frontier of slavery undermined their own class’s justifications for slavery, the possibilities for enslaved people’s resistance, and freedpeople’s experience of emancipation along unleveed and untamed rivers. Planters’ ability to profit without controlling the river derived from owning land in both the bottomlands and uplands while exploiting a large enslaved labour force, a reality that increased the amount of work they expected of their slaves. After emancipation freedpeople incurred their former masters’ environmental debts in the bottomlands with floods worsened from a legacy of land clearance and cultivation that overloaded the South’s smaller rivers with sediment. Forced to battle the river during slavery, freedpeople encountered an even more destructive river in freedom at the very moment their world changed from plantation to a single plot within that landscape.

The Plantationocene: A Lusotropical Contribution to the Theory

In this article, I contribute to theorization of the modern era as the Plantationocene, a concept grounded in life on the land and centered around the role of the plantation in sustaining a racialized elite, propelling colonial exploration, creating a core and a periphery, sanctioning forced labor, and shaping both the cultures we consume and the cultural norms we inhabit and perform. I draw on empirical work conducted in the lusotropics (Brazil, Mozambique, and Portugal) as well as on theoretical work in agrarian studies, critical development studies, and political ecology to elaborate on three aspects I argue are necessary to a complete understanding of plantation influences within and beyond its physical borders: the plantation as a concrete set of social relations, the plantation form as a historically specific imperative in the modern world system, and the plantation landscape as a discursive ideal.

Rival landscapes of Georgia’s coastal plantations

Plantation landscapes on the Georgia coast were created and maintained by plantation owners and enslaved peoples with influences from the broader Atlantic World. Though plantation owners at the Sapelo Plantation defined the structure and boundaries of certain plantation spaces, enslaved people could manipulate, maintain, and control certain parts of those rival landscapes. The degree to which enslaved people could engage in reconfigurations of private places and spatial control of settlement spaces is reflected in the social rigidity of the plantation landscape and places.

Deli Tobacco as a Cultural Heritage

Deli tobacco plantation is the first plantation in Tanah Deli. The history of plantations in East Sumatra began with the success of Jacobus Nienhuys planting Deli tobacco in Tanah Deli. Since World War II in 1945, Deli tobacco production has begun to decline. Such a condition has affected the area of Deli tobacco plantations. Since Deli tobacco is an ever triumphed characteristic and pioneer at the international level, tobacco plantations in East Sumatra should be protected and maintained as a cultural heritage. Problems are formulated into how social factors influence the decline of tobacco products and how to protect the landscape of Deli tobacco plantations. This study employed normative juridical research using descriptive analysis. The findings show that the factors influencing the decline production of tobacco among others are decreasing land fertility and difficulty of obtaining a new estate, the global economic depression, the nationalization and the occurrence of social revolutions leading to land grabbing by the community. Deli tobacco is classified as a cultural heritage, a legacy, and a historical landmark of Tanah Deli. Protection of Deli tobacco landscape according to Law No. 11 of 2010 concerning Cultural Heritage states that its existence needs to be preserved due to its important value for history, education, and culture. Conclusion Sustainable landscapes help fulfill the principles of sustainable development as laid out in development goals. The suggestion of the results of this study is that Deli tobacco must be protected and maintained as an agrotourism landscape.

Bird abundance is highly dynamic across succession in early seral tree plantations

Tree plantations are integral for meeting society’s demand for wood products and are increasing in total area worldwide. It is therefore critical to understand how plantations affect native biodiversity. Our aim was to examine the degree to which plantations affect biodiversity by 1) quantifying songbird abundance across a gradient in forest stand age (stand initiation through canopy closure), 2) estimating the duration of early seral habitat, and 3) testing if forest structural and compositional elements prolong habitat availability. This approach is equivalent to the modeling of wood ‘yield curves’ common in forest management but applied to a biodiversity indicator.We used a chronosequence sampling design to survey songbirds and vegetation in 283 plantations aged 0–30 years in the Oregon Coast Range, USA. Stands were randomly selected within age strata and surveys were temporally replicated in order to use N-mixture models to estimate abundance after accounting for imperfect detection. The Coast Range is considered one of the most productive forest regions in the world and plantations occur on over 50% of the forested land base. Our chronosequence encompasses the assumed age of canopy closure, which we anticipated to be the point at which early seral biodiversity declines.We detected 5074 birds of 71 species during the 2018 and 2019 breeding seasons. Canopy closure occurred approximately 12 years following clearcut harvest and replanting. We found that bird abundance changed dynamically during this short early seral stage. Twenty species peaked in abundance either very early in stand development or with the approximate timing of canopy closure, and then subsequently declined to low levels by the end of the 30-year chronosequence. The estimated abundance of 3 species increased following canopy closure. We also found, contrary to our hypothesis, that the amount of broadleaf cover increased habitat longevity for only one species – Wilson’s warbler.To our knowledge, our study provides the first quantitative estimates for how bird species abundances change throughout the entire early seral stage in tree plantations in western North America – information that can be used to assess tradeoffs between timber production and biodiversity. We found that the duration of early seral habitat in plantations is short and generally cannot be ameliorated by managing for higher levels of broadleaf cover. This finding has important implications for early seral species in the rapidly shifting mosaic of tree plantation landscapes.

Impact of Forest Fragment on Bird Community at the Bukit Kuantan Rubber Forest Plantation

Realizing the potential of expanding rubber forest plantations in Malaysia and the increasing awareness of biodiversity, the Bukit Kuantan rubber forest plantation portrays its ecofriendly nature through several initiatives such as conservation of natural forest fragment within the plantation landscape. By using birds as an indicator, this work aims for a favourable outcome from conservation of the forest fragment and investigate bird diversity in relation to distance from the forest fragment into the rubber forest plantation area. The number of bird species recorded is high in the forest fragment i.e., 45 species, however, the number steadily declined with distance. Likewise, species diversity is high in the forest fragment, H’ = 3.404 but declined with distance. Fourteen (14) species are exclusively found in the forest fragment. Through the findings, it can be deduced that the presence of forest fragment helps to increase bird diversity in the rubber forest plantation, although continuous research is still required to understand how the presence of forest fragment sustains the biodiversity within a plantation landscape.

Harriet Jacobs, Marronage, and Alternative Freedoms in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs, Marronage, and Alternative Freedoms in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Sean Gerrity Five hundred years of flights from captivity, into communal and conceptual wilderness, created the maroon philosophers’ natural habitat at the boundary of democracy. Such outsider terrain superficially appears as a reservation or cell; yet it is in part a trajectory into freedom. (124) Joy James, “Afrarealism and the Black Matrix” (2013) What if we were to imagine Harriet Jacobs—or Linda Brent, her pseudonym in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)—as a maroon during her almost seven years famously concealed in the tiny garret above her grandmother’s shed?1 This essay argues that doing so is both accurate and generative. It also illustrates that Incidents is pervaded by representations of all kinds of maroons, and seeks to complicate and expand our understanding of a term traditionally used to denote enslaved people throughout the hemisphere who took flight from bondage and sought freedom and refuge by concealing themselves in the remote, inhospitable landscapes of swamps, forests, and mountains. Through sustained attention to marronage in Incidents, I identify a constellation of alternative tactics and forms of freedom and marronage and locate these within a broader discourse on freedom and unfreedom found throughout early and antebellum African American literature. Angela Davis has proposed that “the history of Black literature contains a much more illuminating account of the nature of freedom, its extent and limits, than all the philosophical discourses on this theme in the history of Western society” (Lectures 1), and I intend to read Incidents in part as a literary text that exemplifies this claim. During her time in the garret (and nearby), Brent is hiding in places technically in the purview of the slave system, within the homes and outdoor [End Page 67] locales of Edenton, the small North Carolina town of her birth and upbringing. Her condition, her maroon subject position, though one of extreme hardship, still affirms enslaved Black women’s subjectivity, community, and affective kinship relations in the face of systemic and de jure white supremacy vis-àvis chattel slavery. It is a total denial of slavery from within slavery’s borders, from within the borders of the plantation landscape itself, and a realization of a de facto freedom. Reading Brent’s retreat to her garret as marronage reconfigures the contours of freedom and unfreedom in Incidents. It enables us to recognize how Jacobs documents and explores a broad spectrum of previously overlooked freedom-seeking tactics. If we have not been able to recognize or affirm these before, it is in large part because we have been beholden to what Steven Hahn laments as “rather limited and one-dimensional images and understandings of what a maroon is” in the United States, and also because maroons’ often illegible presence in the textual archive mirrors their deliberate concealment within slaveholding societies during the times in which they lived (26). Incidents suggests that spaces of marronage are imbued with nonmaterial resources like the hopes, fears, aspirations, memories, desires, and epistemes of the enslaved—particularly of enslaved women. From these spaces of marronage, from the maroons who created and inhabited them, and from Jacobs’s representation of them, there arise ways of being and knowing that are overlooked when critical focus remains attached to an imagined political and geographical trajectory that locates unfreedom in the South and freedom in the North or Canada. We also come to realize that Incidents is not a text that exceptionalizes the individual experiences of its narrator (and author), but rather one that links those experiences with a network of maroon activities and subject positions oriented toward alternative possibilities for freedom. Carolyn Sorisio has argued that Incidents “participates in heated philosophical debates over the nature of identity that were prevalent during her time” (2; emphasis added). I argue as well that the narrative participates in debates about the nature of freedom in opposition to traditional liberal conceptions centering on civil rights and official state recognition. The essay’s series of contentions take it as understood that, as Manisha Sinha asserts, “Slave resistance, not bourgeois liberalism, lay at the heart of the abolition movement” (1...

Aggressive tree killer or natural thinning agent? Assessing the impacts of a globally important forest insect

Invasive insects and pathogens are prominent tree mortality agents in forests around the world, and the magnitude of their impacts is increasing. Comparative studies across multiple populations can be helpful for the development of new insights and innovative management strategies. We used the Sirex woodwasp, Sirex noctilio Fabricius, as a model system to compare invasion impacts across a range of ecological contexts around the globe: native woodwasps colonizing native trees, invasive woodwasps in non-native plantation trees, and invasive woodwasps attacking native trees. Across 133 stands of eight pine species on four continents, tree mortality associated with S. noctilio attack was positively correlated with stand basal area and stand density, and was mostly confined to smaller, suppressed trees. Larger average tree size and greater distances between trees were linked to lower levels of tree mortality. To more deeply assess the impacts of tree loss due to this pest, we examined mortality in vigorous trees, defined as those with a stem diameter greater than or equal to 90% of the mean diameter for trees in the stand. Sirex noctilio- related mortality in vigorous trees was rare, with one exception where Pinus contorta stands in Argentina lost as many as 300 vigorous trees ha−1. Pine species varied dramatically in their susceptibility to S. noctilio: for example, these losses in P. contorta were in stark contrast to very low mortality in P. ponderosa, the other pine species grown in Argentina. Surprisingly, location did not alter patterns in the influence of stand basal area on tree susceptibility for individual species. Most notably, Pinus radiata had the same relationship between basal area and tree mortality when grown in Spain (where S. noctilio is native and not considered a meaningful forest pest) and South Africa (where S. noctilio is a problematic invasive). Our findings suggest that the availability of optimal pine hosts is a key driver of S. noctilio-related tree mortality across continents and management regimes. Important variables that influence host availability include species-specific susceptibility and environmental and management-related factors that promote or limit the number of stressed trees present both within stands and across the regional forest or plantation landscape.

Passive restoration in Araucaria Forest: useful ecological indicators in monitoring successional advancement in exotic tree plantation landscapes

Monitoring successional advancement is a complex field involving a constant search for applied ecological indicators which facilitate monitoring of secondary forests for both active and passive restoration. In this study, the authors investigate the successional advancement of floristics and tree structure within Araucaria Forest (AF) fragments under passive restoration in a context where exotic tree plantations (mainly Pinus L. genus) dominate the landscape. The ecological indicators used were floristic dissimilarity (β‐diversity inferences), indicator species, ecological groups of species, basal area, and species abundance distribution (SAD) models (α‐diversity inferences). A total of 182 tree species belonging to 91 genera and 43 botanical families were identified. A high β diversity was verified for which each site has indicator species (for the locations CD—Dicksonia sellowiana; CO—Cryptocarya aschersoniana; and PG—Pinus taeda), where pioneer species contributed to much of the abundance. Different SAD models are useful for describing passive restoration sites in exotic tree plantation landscapes, namely Lognormal, Mandelbrot, and Zipf. SAD models together with basal area, taxonomic group (e.g. Myrtaceae assemblage), and tree abundance in ecological groups are strategic ecological indicators for monitoring successional advancement in AF.

Wind-Powered Sugar Mills as Constructions of Control in Colonial Montserrat

Caribbean plantation landscapes were designed to mediate interactions between planters and enslaved laborers. In this paper, wind-powered sugar mills on the island of Montserrat are singled out as being prominent components of the plantation environment that were not only economically productive, but also served as markers of planter power and control. The mills’ distinctive shape and height render them instantly identifiable, and their integral role in the sugar production process makes them signifiers of that industry. Here, viewshed analysis is employed to demonstrate the visual ubiquity of Montserrat’s sugar mills before emancipation, emphasizing the affective power of these edifices even beyond the borders of the individual plantations they served.

Landscapes of movement on lowcountry rice plantations

Navigable waterways were essential to European colonization of the South Carolina Lowcountry beginning in the late 17th century. Despite early attempts by colonial leaders to keep land grants within close proximity to Charleston, colonists quickly began to establish plantations where the land was amenable for commodity production and scattered throughout the region. Consequently, colonists and enslaved individuals utilized navigable waterways by extending the built environment into the water through wharves, landings, and watercraft, as well as modifying the waterways themselves for irrigation, agriculture, and mobility. Despite the importance of waterways in the function of plantations, most landscape studies have focused on terrestrial contexts. This paper proposes that waterway assemblages should be integrated into plantation landscape studies as a means of understanding the role of movement in commodity production, surveillance, and communication to better reconstruct everyday life, focusing on the preliminary remote sensing fieldwork of two antebellum plantation waterfronts as case studies.

Ranging Behavior of an Arboreal Marsupial in a Plantation Landscape

ABSTRACTForests are becoming increasingly fragmented, primarily because of their conversion to production landscapes. Animals occupying modified landscapes may need to expand their ranges and move longer distances between remnant forest patches to find resources. The establishment of plantations in fragmented landscapes, however, may provide complementary habitat for wildlife and improve connectivity, reducing the amount of movement required. Our objective was to determine the influence of plantations on koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) habitat use and test 2 competing hypotheses on the relationship between plantations and range size. We deployed global positioning system and very high frequency collars on 40 koalas in 2 landscapes (plantation and non‐plantation) in Victoria, Australia. From 68,216 tracking points collected over an 8‐month period, we calculated and compared seasonal home range size and habitat use between landscapes. There was no difference in range size, the size and number of core use areas, or the distance between core use areas between plantation and non‐plantation landscapes. Plantations extend existing koala habitat and facilitate koala movement through a landscape; however, remnant native vegetation is still more frequently used. Consequently, native vegetation (even fragmented, linear roadside vegetation) is of high conservation importance for the persistence of koalas in modified landscapes. © 2020 The Wildlife Society.