Most Native Trees Surrounded By Oil Palm Plantations Don't Live Long Enough To Reproduce
Most forest trees that persist in areas dominated by oil palm plantations die before they can mature, a new study shows, emphasizing the urgency of conserving or restoring forested areas to ensure the promotion of biodiversity and other ecosystem services. The study, published in journal Global Ecology and Conservation, looked at the density and distribution patterns of trees across a 1,120-hectare (2,768-acre) swath in the lowlands of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.
Oil palm plantations blanket this landscape. But using a drone to map the area, researchers identified a scattering of rainforest trees amid this monoculture, at about six to eight trees per 100 oil palms. But they’re distributed unevenly. In older plantations, located in the southeastern part of the study location, the researchers found the interiors of the plantations there to “barely contain scattered trees,” at 4.6 trees per hectare.
In the northwestern part of the study area, where oil palm cultivation is newer, there were three times as many forest trees remaining, about 14 trees per hectare. “This might indicate that tree density declines over time in conventional oil palm monocultures,” the researchers said in the study.
EDIT
“The small crown diameter in the entire study area, nevertheless, suggests, that most trees here were young and disappeared before they reached larger dimensions,” the researchers wrote. The disappearance of these forest trees in oil palm landscapes means the loss of multiple ecosystem services, such as promotion of biodiversity, that they provide. Even young trees have been shown to promote communities of birds and invertebrates in oil palm monocultures.
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/remnant-forests-struggle-to-survive-amid-oil-palm-plantations-study-shows/