近日，澳大利亚詹姆斯库克大学Engert, Jayden E.、Campbell, Mason J.和Laurance, William F.及其团队在研究亚太热带森林的毁灭中取得新进展。相关论文于2024年4月10日发表在《自然》杂志上。

据研究人员介绍，道路正在以人类历史上最快的速度扩张。在生物多样性丰富的热带国家尤其如此，在这些国家，道路可能造成森林丧失和破碎化、野火、非法土地入侵和负面的社会影响。许多道路是非法或非正式建造的，没有出现在任何现有的道路地图上，人们对这种“幽灵公路”对生态系统造成的损失知之甚少。

研究涉及有专业背景的志愿者大约是7000个小时的努力，对142万个地块进行采样，每个地块的面积为1km³。以绘制横跨亚太热带地区的幽灵道路。密集抽样显示，研究地块内共有137万km的道路，比全球主要道路数据集中发现的道路多3.0到6.6倍。在研究区域内，道路建设几乎总是先于当地森林的丧失，在38个潜在的生物物理和社会经济协变量中，道路密度与森林砍伐的相关性是迄今为止最强的。

道路密度与森林损失之间的关系是非线性的，在道路穿过到地貌后不久，森林砍伐量达到峰值，然后随着道路的增加和剩余的可达森林大量消失而减少。值得注意的是，在控制了保护区内较低的道路密度后，研究人员发现，保护区在防止森林损失方面只有适度的额外效果，这意味着它们最重要的保护功能是限制道路和道路相关的环境破坏。总的来说，该研究结果表明，新兴的、研究不足的幽灵公路是对热带森林最严重的直接威胁之一。

附：英文原文

Title: Ghost roads and the destruction of Asia-Pacific tropical forests

Author: Engert, Jayden E., Campbell, Mason J., Cinner, Joshua E., Ishida, Yoko, Sloan, Sean, Supriatna, Jatna, Alamgir, Mohammed, Cislowski, Jaime, Laurance, William F.

Issue&Volume: 2024-04-10

Abstract: Roads are expanding at the fastest pace in human history. This is the case especially in biodiversity-rich tropical nations, where roads can result in forest loss and fragmentation, wildfires, illicit land invasions and negative societal effects. Many roads are being constructed illegally or informally and do not appear on any existing road map; the toll of such ‘ghost roads’ on ecosystems is poorly understood. Here we use around 7,000h of effort by trained volunteers to map ghost roads across the tropical Asia-Pacific region, sampling 1.42million plots, each 1km² in area. Our intensive sampling revealed a total of 1.37million km of roads in our plots—from 3.0 to 6.6 times more roads than were found in leading datasets of roads globally. Across our study area, road building almost always preceded local forest loss, and road density was by far the strongest correlate of deforestation out of 38 potential biophysical and socioeconomic covariates. The relationship between road density and forest loss was nonlinear, with deforestation peaking soon after roads penetrate a landscape and then declining as roads multiply and remaining accessible forests largely disappear. Notably, after controlling for lower road density inside protected areas, we found that protected areas had only modest additional effects on preventing forest loss, implying that their most vital conservation function is limiting roads and road-related environmental disruption. Collectively, our findings suggest that burgeoning, poorly studied ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07303-5

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07303-5