Tak has co-authored a new paper on bamboo biomass estimation that has just been published in Forest Ecology and Management.

Bamboo species are widely distributed around the world, and often achieve high growth rates that favour the accumulation of carbon. However, a general understanding of the carbon storage potential of bamboo has been hindered by the restricted geographic and taxonomic scope of previous studies. To address this issue, Tak worked with Jiaqi Yuen and Alan Ziegler (Department of Geography, NUS) to produce a comprehensive review of existing studies of carbon storage estimates in bamboo. This review includes an assessment of how much carbon is stored by different groups of bamboo species in different geographic regions, and the proportional allocation among aboveground and belowground components. In addition, the review collates allometric equations important for estimating carbon storage in bamboo, and provides results from a new field study in Thailand illustrating the difficulties and uncertainties in determining the carbon storage potential of bamboo.

Overall, the review concludes that bamboo has the potential to be an important carbon sink relative to other types of land cover, provided that bamboo stands are managed efficiently and harvested bamboo is used in durable products. Therefore, bamboo could be given greater recognition in policy instruments aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change, such as the Kyoto Protocol.

Jia Qi Yuen, Tak Fung and Alan D. Ziegler. Carbon stocks in bamboo ecosystems worldwide: Estimates and uncertainties. Forest Ecology and Management 393 (2017): 113–138.

A bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan. Photo credit: Dariusz Jemielniak (covered by a CC BY-SA 3.0 licence).

How much are Singaporeans willing to pay for clean air? Singapore is blighted annually by haze drifting over from forest and peat fires in Indonesia. A particularly severe haze event occurred in 2015, with Singapore blanketed in foul air for nearly three months. The economic impacts of the haze include negative effects on transport, health and tourism. How much are these economic impacts worth? In this study just published online in Environmental Research Letters, we estimated these impacts indirectly using the contingent valuation method: we asked Singaporeans how much of their annual income they would be willing to sacrifice, e.g., in the form of a tax, to guarantee haze-free skies year round. The surveys used the double-bounded dichotomous choice method, and we scaled the results up from the sample of 390 individuals to Singapore as a whole. The paper was led by Honours student Lin Yuan.

Our final estimate for Singapore’s total annual willingness to pay was US$643.5 million (SGD 881.6 million). This number is on par with previous estimates of haze costs, derived from different methods, and is similar in magnitude to the estimated costs of proposed large-scale haze-mitigation programmes in Indonesia. Our results can thus inform future regional policy making with regards to haze mitigation.

Yuan Lin, Lahiru Wijedasa and Ryan A. Chisholm (2016). Singapore’s willingness to pay for mitigation of transboundary forest-fire haze from Indonesia. Environmental Research Letters

UPDATE: Our paper has been covered by TODAY newspaper.

14 Sep 2015: National University of Singapore during the major 2015 haze event

14 Sep 2016: National University of Singapore on a regular, non-haze day

Lahiru’s recently published letters in Global Change Biology and Science highlight the need for more research into sustainable peatland agricultural techniques. Current techniques lead to fires causing haze and high carbon emissions, and will eventually result in the long-term loss of agricultural land due to land subsidence and flooding. Developing peatland agriculture techniques that do not require drainage and result in a net positive carbon balance are the keys to a sustainable future for peatlands. While such techniques do not exist today, acknowledging the problem is the first step towards finding a solution.

L. S. Wijedasa, et al. (139 co-authors) (2016) Denial of long-term issues with agriculture on tropical peatlands will have devastating consequences. Global Change Biology (in press)

L. S. Wijedasa, S. E. Page, C. E. Evans, M. Osaki (2016) Time for responsible peatland agriculture. Science, 354:562.

Tak has just returned from the Models in Population Dynamics and Ecology (MPDE) conference in Marseille, which was held over 5th-9th September at the Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques (CIRM) at Aix-Marseille University. During the conference, Tak presented two new Markov Chain models describing how species abundances fluctuate under environmental variation. The models are novel in that they can be analysed to derive exact expressions for species richness and community abundance, allowing investigation of how these quantities change with increasing environmental variation, for example due to global climate change. Determining changes in richness and abundance is important because they are fundamental drivers of ecosystem functioning. In addition to presenting this work, Tak also took the opportunity to learn more about some of the latest developments in theoretical population biology and ecology, and connect with other researchers in this area.

Catharina attended the World Herpetology Congress in China, where she presented a talk titled “Ansonia platysoma, the effect of habitat variables on occupancy”. She was able to attend the congress as she was awarded a partial scholarship by the congress that covered the registration fee, food and accommodation. She was also elected as a student member onto the congress committee.

The lab has received a major research grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. The McDonnell Foundation was established in 1950 by aerospace pioneer James S. McDonnell and seeks to “improve the quality of life”. The US-based foundation supports complex systems research and will fund our work on complex ecological systems for the next five years.

James. S McDonnell

Tak and Ryan recently attended a Center for Tropical Forest Science – Forest Global Earth Observatory (CTFS-ForestGEO) workshop at Jianfengling Nature Reserve in Hainan, China. CTFS-ForestGeo maintains a network of over 60 permanent forest plots around the world containing over 6 million individual trees. The picturesque surroundings at Jianfeng made the perfect backdrop to 11 days of data analysis, seminars, and field trips.

Members of the lab attended the Conservation Asia 2016 conference in Singapore last week. This conference was the joint meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (Asia-Pacific chapter) and the Society for Conservation Biology (Asia section). Present were around 500 attendees including academics, business people, government employees, and NGO staff. The mix of attendees made for fascinating talks and stimulating discussions. Catharina, Lahiru, and Ryan all presented talks.

Last week Sam and Ryan visited the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo. SAFE is an ongoing large-scale experiment examining the effects of forest fragmentation on ecosystems.

Large areas of forest in Borneo have been converted to oil palm plantation in recent decades. Researchers at SAFE are making use of planned deforestation and oil palm planting in eastern Sabah to study the effects on biodiversity and ecosystem processes within remnant forest fragments. These fragments are protected and used as experimental sites for multiple research projects. We spent a few days with the researchers at the camp, visiting some of the fragments and hearing about the experiments the researchers there are undertaking.

Cleared forest awaiting oil palm planting (left) and established oil palm plantations (right)

Logged forest (left) and oil palm plantation (right) near the SAFE camp

Nega has successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled “Climate change and bird distributions with a focus on Ethiopia: implications for conservation”. In the thesis, he looked at the effect of climate change both on past range shifts of birds at a global scale and on potential future range shifts of birds in Ethiopia. He now returns to Ethiopia to take up his position at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. Congratulations, Nega!