Improvement of forest management key strategies: a contribution to conservation and sustainable land use

Final Report Abstract

In spite of a variety of efforts, tropical forests are still threatened by exploitation and conversion to agricultural land-use. Besides legal protection, sustainable management concepts are essential for stable conservation of these ecosystems. This project aimed at identifying and optimizing the potentials for forest management for three different ecosystems (Tropical Dry Forest, Tropical Mountain Rain Forest, Páramo) along a height- and climate gradient in Southern Ecuador. Therefore, multiple and locally differentiated aspects of forest management have been considered: the direct provision of goods (timber and non-timber forest products) as well as ecosystem services (carbon sequestration, water regulation); moreover, the effects of forest management on biodiversity and the impacts of global changes on resilience indicators and the projected distribution of selected species with high potential for sustainable management or conservation has been investigated. First, the most important forest structure types and possible improvements of management alternatives have been identified for the assessment of different management concepts. We installed comprehensive inventory- or experimental field plots and conducted monitoring for the locally most important criteria of forest management. Finally, we supported the development and application of a sound decision-support tool for land-use optimization in cooperation with our partner projects, taking into account reforestation options in the Tropical Mountain Rain Forest ecosystem and their uncertainties with regard to input parameters and the relevance of different criteria of forest management. In addition, the results of our studies in the Tropical Dry Forest and the Páramo enable to consider the multiple functions of forest management accordingly in order to represent the forestry component in sustainable land-use models. The comprehensive studies have been carried out in close cooperation with other scientific teams from Germany and Ecuador as well as local institutions of relevance for forest management. The direct involvement of Ecuadorian students and young academics and the integration of the results in educational concepts contribute to capacity building and local efforts for the enhancement of environmental competencies.

Publications

• (2014). Afforestation or intense pasturing improve the ecological and economic value of abandoned tropical farmlands. Nature communications 5, 5612
  Knoke T., Bendix J., Pohle P., Hamer U., Hildebrandt P., Roos K., Gerique A., Sandoval M.L., Breuer L., Tischer A., Silva B., Calvas B., Aguirre N., Castro L.M., Windhorst D., Weber M., Stimm B., Günter S., Palomeque X., Mora J., Mosandl R., Beck E.
  
• (2015). Optimizing agricultural land-use portfolios with scarce data - A non-stochastic model. Ecological Economics 120: 250-259
  Knoke T., Paul C., Härtl F., Castro L.M., Calvas B., Hildebrandt P.
  
• (2016). Assessing the importance of topographic variables for the spatial distribution of tree species in a tropical mountain forest. Erdkunde – Archive for Scientific Geography 70/1, 19-47
  Kübler D., Hildebrandt P., Günter S., Stimm B., Weber M., Mosandl R., Muñoz J., Cabrera O., Aguirre N., Zeilinger J., Silva B.
  
• (2016). Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties. Nature communications 7, 11877
  Knoke T., Paul C., Hildebrandt P., Calvas B., Castro L.M., Härtl F., Döllerer M., Hamer U., Windhorst D., Wiersma Y.F., Curatola Fernandez G.F., Obermeier W.A., Adams J., Breuer L., Mosandl R., Beck E., Weber M., Stimm B., Haber W., Fürst C., Bendix J.
  
• (2016). Management of Natural Forests and Reforestation. In: Bogner F, Bendix J, Beck E (Eds.). A Biodiversity Hotspot; Quito, Ecuador, ISBN 978-9942-14-538-3, S. 123-127
  Hildebrandt P., Kübler D., Weber M., Stimm B., Mosandl R.
  
• (2017). Climate change versus deforestation: Implications for tree species distribution in the dry forests of southern Ecuador. PloS one, 12(12), e0190092
  Manchego C.E., Hildebrandt P., Cueva J., Espinosa C.I., Stimm B., Günter S.
  
• (2017). Improvement of forest management key strategies: a contribution to conservation and sustainable land use. In: Beck, E. et al. (Eds.): Landscape Restoration, Sustainable Use and Cross-scale Monitoring of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions - A Science-directed Approach for South Ecuador, pp. 27-40
  Hildebrandt P., Günter S., Aguirre N., Calvas B., Palomeque X., Manchego C., Veintimilla D., Mosandl R., Stimm B., Weber M.
  
• (2017). Intraspecific Variability in Seed Quality of Native Tree Species in Mountain Forests in Southern Ecuador: Implications for Forest Restoration. Revista de Ciencias Ambientales (Tropical Journal of Environmental Sciences) 51(2): 52-72
  Palomeque X., Maza A., Iñanagua J.P., Günter S., Hildebrandt P., Weber M., Stimm B.
  
• (2017). Natural or assisted succession as approach of forest recovery on abandoned lands with different land use history in the Andes of Southern Ecuador. New Forests 48: 643-662
  Palomeque X., Günter S., Siddons D., Hildebrandt P., Stimm B., Aguirre N., Arias R., Weber M.
  
• (2018). Contrasting Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Pine Plantations in the Páramo Ecosystem of Ecuador. Sustainability 10, 1707
  Quiroz Dahik C., Crespo P., Stimm B., Murtinho F., Weber M., Hildebrandt P.