Becoming Europe: Southeast Asia in the Anthropocene

摘要: When I visited the Southeast Asian tropics as an undergraduate in 1973 it seemed different from my European home anywhere on Earth could be. The forest was already retreat, but large contiguous tracts remained virtually intact. Fast-forward 40 years, however, and more than half of original cover Asia has gone, what remains been logged or otherwise degraded, majority, unlogged, lost most all its vertebrate fauna to hunting (Corlett, 2009). non-forest areas are increasingly dominated by plantation monocultures, urban their associated infrastructure, native biota is confined with less intact cover, while a few species increasing number exotics have massively expanded populations. Air pollution nitrogen deposition pervasive, unstudied, problems impacts climate change becoming apparent. crop monocultures trees rather cereals, other ways region fast tropical version Europe. densely-populated Philippines Vietnam similar human population densities Belgium UK, relatively sparsely populated Laos Sweden (Table 1). At regional scale, somewhat higher mean density Union (EU) and, since still urbanized, rural even higher. per-capita GDPs richer countries (excluding tiny Singapore oil-rich Brunei) overlap poorer EU, rising rapidly. Other statistics also converging, including infant mortality, life expectancy, total fertility rates Both regions were once largely forested remaining today (44% for TEA, 37% EU), variation among countries, although nowhere little left Netherlands, Ireland UK. suffered known extinctions historical times (iucnredlist.org). Despite these similarities, Europe considered relative success story conservation terms, widely seen on-going biodiversity crisis (Sodhi et al., 2004, 2010; Wilcove 2013). There good reasons this. First, there much at stake Asia, which, well-studied groups, supports 15–25% global terrestrial Europe, contrast, considerably fewer (, 5% total) land area. Secondly, forests likely be vulnerable extinction, both because high means small sizes, extreme contrast between environment closed-canopy anthropogenic habitats that replace them. Few non-coastal can survive outside many adapted human-dominated landscapes Thirdly, ecological transformation extremely rapid persistence only tiny, isolated populations implies extinction debts. Moreover, now changing slowly, no sign slowdown implying future species. Finally, ecologically best-known planet, least, detriment planning implementation. This new landscape calls ecology: one does not require pristine forest, ‘fragments’ this uniformly hostile matrix. An ecology patches irregular size, shape, history composition, novel ecosystems combine which previous met, chronic disturbances ubiquitous edge effects, heterogeneity change. ecologists always worked such landscapes, they others, foundations ‘tropical countryside ecology’ laid densely Neotropics, Domain Editor-in-Chief Donald R. Zak, University Michigan