Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management

Tropical forests cover a small fraction of Earth's land surface yet harbor more than half of all known species and regulate carbon and water cycles at a planetary scale, making their loss one of the most consequential environmental changes underway. Researchers in this area examine why deforestation happens—tracing pressures from agriculture, timber markets, infrastructure, and weak governance—and what can slow or reverse it, including protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, and community-managed forests. A central tension in the literature concerns whether market-based mechanisms like carbon credits genuinely reduce forest loss or simply shift it elsewhere, and how conservation interventions can be designed so that local communities bear costs while distant societies capture benefits. Underlying nearly all of it is the harder question of how biodiversity and ecosystem function can be maintained as land-use pressures intensify and climate change reshapes the conditions forests evolved under.

Works

82,047

Total citations

1,427,379

Keywords

Tropical DeforestationEnvironmental ServicesProtected AreasCommunity-Based ConservationBiodiversity ConservationPayments for Ecosystem Services