David Coomes results 67
· Newest (Page 1/3, per page 25)
Author: David Coomes ×Clear All Filters
Search Results
The Mental Health Impacts of Wildfire Exposure: A Scoping Review of the Quantitative EvidenceNARA Subscribed
Wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity worldwide, with growing evidence linking wildfire exposure to adverse mental health outcomes. This scoping review aimed to summarize and critically assess the existing quantitative literature on wildfire-related mental health impacts. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar to identify studies published between 2000 and 2025, which we analyzed to understand how...
Mineral Stabilization Slows Losses of Peatland Carbon Following Long‐Term Drainage for AgricultureNARA Subscribed
Cultivated peatlands are a major CO 2 emission source, but the processes that regulate the decomposition of drained peat are debated, especially as drained peat becomes increasingly shallow. Many cultivated peatlands are underlain by a mineral soil layer. Surface subsidence, oxidation and tillage reduce the peat thickness, which intermixes peat with minerals as peat is lost. A key question is whether this mixing can reduce emi...
Emerging biodiversity credit markets are promoted globally as a solution to financing nature recovery at scale. In southern England, which has experienced particularly strong declines in biodiversity as a result of intensification of farming practices, the Knepp Estate has pioneered trophic rewilding of marginal arable land as a nature recovery solution. The scaling up of rewilding initiatives will require long‐term funding, f...
Conservation changed but not dividedNARA Subscribed
When can we detect lianas from space? Toward a mechanistic understanding of liana‐infested forest opticsNARA Subscribed
Lianas, woody vines acting as structural parasites of trees, have profound effects on the composition and structure of tropical forests, impacting tree growth, mortality, and forest succession. Remote sensing could offer a powerful tool for quantifying the scale of liana infestation, provided the availability of robust detection methods. We analyze the consistency and global geographic specificity of spectral signals—reflectan...
Dominance and rarity in tree communities across the globe: Patterns, predictors and threatsNARA Subscribed
Aim Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the following research questions: (1) What are the patterns of dominance and rarity in tree...
Tall Bornean forests experience higher canopy disturbance rates than those in the eastern Amazon or Guiana shieldNARA Subscribed
The future of tropical forests hinges on the balance between disturbance rates, which are expected to increase with climate change, and tree growth. Whereas tree growth is a slow process, disturbance events occur sporadically and tend to be short‐lived. This difference challenges forest monitoring to achieve sufficient resolution to capture tree growth, while covering the necessary scale to characterize disturbance rates. Airb...
In tropical forests, trees strategically balance growth patterns to optimise fitness amid multiple environmental stressors. Wind poses the primary risk to a tree's mechanical stability, prompting developments such as thicker trunks to withstand the bending forces. Therefore, a trade‐off in resource allocation exists between diameter growth and vertical growth to compete for light. We explore this trade‐off by measuring the rel...
Small‐scale fisheries are vital to millions of rural people, but surprisingly little is known about the environmental and socio‐economic factors that guide rural peoples' decisions to adopt a fishery‐oriented livelihood. We analyzed data from a large‐scale household survey of 3929 households in 235 rural communities in the Peruvian Amazon to develop multi‐scalar quantitative models to explain engagement in fishing and the rela...
A global evaluation of the effectiveness of voluntary REDD+ projects at reducing deforestation and degradation in the moist tropicsNARA Subscribed
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects aim to contribute to climate change mitigation by protecting and enhancing carbon stocks in tropical forests, but there have been no systematic global evaluations of their impact. We used a new data set for tropical humid forests and a standardized evaluation approach (based on pixel matching) to quantify the performance of a representative sample of...
Data capturing multiple axes of tree size and shape, such as a tree's stem diameter, height and crown size, underpin a wide range of ecological research—from developing and testing theory on forest structure and dynamics, to estimating forest carbon stocks and their uncertainties, and integrating remote sensing imagery into forest monitoring programmes. However, these data can be surprisingly hard to come by, particularly for...
Leech blood‐meal invertebrate‐derived DNA reveals differences in Bornean mammal diversity across habitatsNARA Subscribed
The application of metabarcoding to environmental and invertebrate‐derived DNA (eDNA and iDNA) is a new and increasingly applied method for monitoring biodiversity across a diverse range of habitats. This approach is particularly promising for sampling in the biodiverse humid tropics, where rapid land‐use change for agriculture means there is a growing need to understand the conservation value of the remaining mosaic and degra...
Carbon flux and forest dynamics: Increased deadwood decomposition in tropical rainforest tree‐fall canopy gapsNARA Subscribed
Tree mortality rates are increasing within tropical rainforests as a result of global environmental change. When trees die, gaps are created in forest canopies and carbon is transferred from the living to deadwood pools. However, little is known about the effect of tree‐fall canopy gaps on the activity of decomposer communities and the rate of deadwood decay in forests. This means that the accuracy of regional and global carbo...
Pantropical variability in tree crown allometryNARA Subscribed
Aim Tree crowns determine light interception, carbon and water exchange. Thus, understanding the factors causing tree crown allometry to vary at the tree and stand level matters greatly for the development of future vegetation modelling and for the calibration of remote sensing products. Nevertheless, we know little about large‐scale variation and determinants in tropical tree crown allometry. In this study, we explored the co...
Tall trees are key drivers of ecosystem processes in tropical forest, but the controls on the distribution of the very tallest trees remain poorly understood. The recent discovery of grove of giant trees over 80 meters tall in the Amazon forest requires a reevaluation of current thinking. We used high‐resolution airborne laser surveys to measure canopy height across 282,750 ha of old‐growth and second‐growth forests randomly s...