Wright S Joseph
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843 - 03092, Balboa, Ancón, Panamá, República de Panamá.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2005 Oct;20(10):553-60. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.07.009. Epub 2005 Aug 8.
Understanding and mitigating the impact of an ever-increasing population and global economic activity on tropical forests is one of the great challenges currently facing biologists, conservationists and policy makers. Tropical forests currently face obvious regional changes, both negative and positive, and uncertain global changes. Although deforestation rates have increased to unprecedented levels, natural secondary succession has reclaimed approximately 15% of the area deforested during the 1990s. Governments have also protected 18% of the remaining tropical moist forest; however, unsustainable hunting continues to threaten many keystone mammal and bird species. The structure and dynamics of old-growth forests appear to be rapidly changing, suggesting that there is a pantropical response to global anthropogenic forcing, although the evidence comes almost exclusively from censuses of tree plots and is controversial. Here, I address ongoing anthropogenic change in tropical forests and suggest how these forests might respond to increasing anthropogenic pressure.
了解并减轻不断增长的人口和全球经济活动对热带森林的影响，是生物学家、自然资源保护主义者和政策制定者目前面临的重大挑战之一。热带森林目前面临着明显的区域变化，既有负面的，也有正面的，还有不确定的全球变化。尽管森林砍伐率已升至前所未有的水平，但自然次生演替已收复了20世纪90年代被砍伐面积的约15%。各国政府也已保护了剩余热带湿润森林的18%；然而，不可持续的捕猎仍在威胁着许多关键的哺乳动物和鸟类物种。原始森林的结构和动态似乎正在迅速变化，这表明对全球人为压力存在泛热带响应，尽管证据几乎完全来自树木普查，且存在争议。在此，我探讨了热带森林中正在发生的人为变化，并提出了这些森林可能如何应对不断增加的人为压力。
