Environmental Sciences Commons^™

Spatial Complexity In Fragmenting Amazonian Rainforests: Do Feedbacks From Edge Effects Push Forests Towards An Ecological Threshold?, Graeme S. Cumming, Jane Southworth, Xanic J. Rondon, Matthew Marsik

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

Deforestation and resulting landscape fragmentation are important concerns in many tropical areas. Deforestation is a complex process with many potential feedback loops, many of which are ignored in models that attempt to interpolate forest loss based on past deforestation rates. In addition, most ecological studies of the impacts of deforestation have focused on landscapes that are already fragmented. These studies ignore the fact that edge effects, such as anthropogenic fire, reach their maximum well before habitat connectivity is lost and may create positive feedbacks that result in further fragmentation. We developed a simple model to explore the potential influence of …