Montpellier Scientific Community



Tropical forest goods and ecosystem services (B&SEF)

Director: Alain Billand alain.billand@cirad.fr
Website:
Research area

The aim of the unit is to boost the efficacy of public action in terms of sustainable management of tropical forest ecosystems, while respecting the principles of equity and of reducing inequality. Its work is focused on three components: areas primarily covered by natural or planted tropical and subtropical forests; the societies that make a living from and depend directly on forests, and transform them; and public policies and instruments that apply to forests.
Research highlights
The Unit is directly inheriting from natural forest research activities since the 1950' by CTFT and Cirad Forêt, with decades of experience in central and western Africa, and developments in South East Asia and Amazonian region since the 1990'. Research shifted from industrial wood production to globalised sustainable management of natural resources in tropical areas, involving forestry ecology and botanics, socio-ecosystems, economic instruments of public policies. Recent focus is placed on natural forest dynamics, on climate change, such as adaptation and mitigation including Redd, energy production from biomass, agroforestry, social and environmental enhancing of wood production including certification and legality control, ecosystem monitoring including regional observatories, remote sensing. The unit mixes disciplines to assess and develop schemes for Payment for Environmental Services worldwide.

 
Staff profile
Research Org. Researchers Professors Research Eng.

Techn. & Admin Staff

PhD
CIRAD 44 0 0 4 40
Research teams
Each of its three research teams is working on specific topics, namely, resilience of tropical forest ecosystems to exploitation and global changes; relationships between ecosystem resilience and the vulnerability of societies in ecological and social forest systems; and policies and public action instruments concerning tropical forests. It has developed a number of tools such as technical manuals and forestry management directives, environmental pressure indicators, integrated software for the management of forest inventory data (TFSuite) and a number of databases on major long term systems (+30 years) to monitor forest dynamics (Paracou in French Guiana, M'Baïki in the Central African Republic, Oyan in Gabon). The Unit is in charge of 24 scientific staff living abroad (5 Cameroon, 1 CAR, 2 Gabon, 3 DRC, 1 Burkina Faso, 3 Madagascar, 1 South Africa, 1 Canada, 5 Indonesia, 1 Peru, 1 Brasil -sept11-)

 
Most important international partnerships
The unit has extensive collaboration with international research centers such as the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), member of CGIAR, with 6 staff seconded to Cifor, in addition to partnerships with various universities in Europe and in the South, and foreign research institutions in forestry and agronomy in all countries of expatriation. Furthermore, the Unit maintains narrow working partnership with a range of international funding agencies, in France (AFD, FFEM) and abroad (UE, World Bank, GEF, United Nation Institutions such as FAO, UNEP, UNDP, UNESCO, etc.). The Unit has a long term experience working with the private sector, including forest industries (international/national/local) and consulting companies. Other important partners are international NGO with shared contracts with WWF, CI, TNC, Good Planet, and other. Finally, being a finalised research Unit, we develop all our activities with governments, decision makers, authorities, but also local communities and population representatives.

 
Facts and figures
Publications in international ranking journals

2010: 55

2005 - 2009: 121

 
Representative publications

1. Garcia C.A., Bhagwat S.A., Ghazoul J., Nath C.D., Nanaya K.M., Kushalappa C.G., Raghuramulu Y., Nasi R., Vaast P., 2010 Biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes: Challenges and opportunities of coffee agroforests in the Western Ghats, India. Conservation biology, 24 (2) : 479-488.

2. Freycon V., Krencker M., Schwartz D., Nasi R., Bonal D. 2010. The impact of climate changes during the Holocene on vegetation in northern French Guiana. Quaternary research, 73 (2) : 220-225.

3. Vieilledent G., Courbaud B., Kunstler G., Dhôte J.-F. and Clark J. S., 2010. Individual variability in tree allometries determines light resource allocation in forest ecosystems: a hierarchical Bayesian approach. Oecologia. 163: 759-773.

4. Laumonier Y., Uryu Y., Stüve M., Budiman A., Setiabudi B., Hadian O., 2010. Eco-floristic sectors and deforestation threats in Sumatra: iIentifying new conservation area network priorities for ecosystem-based land use planning. Biodiversity and conservation, 19 (1) : 1153-1174.

5. German L.A. (ed.), Karsenty A. (ed.), Tiani A.M. (ed.). Gouverner les forêts africaines à l'ère de la mondialisation, 2010. Jakarta : CIFOR, XXV-446 p.

6. Montagne P. (ed.), Razafimahatratra S. (ed.), Rasamindisa A. (ed.), Crehay R. (ed.) 2010. Arina, le charbon de bois à Madagascar : entre demande urbaine et gestion durable. Antananarivo : CITE, 187 p.

7. Ezzine de Blas D., Ruiz Pérez M., Sayer J.A., Lescuyer G., Nasi R., Karsenty A. 2009. External influences on and conditions for community logging management in Cameroon. World development, 37 (2) : 445-456.

8. Locatelli B., Vignola R. 2009. Managing watershed services of tropical forests and plantations: Can meta-analyses help?. Forest ecology and management, 258 (9) : 1864-1870.

9. Picard N., Bar-Hen A., Mortier F., Chadoeuf J. 2009. Understanding the dynamics of an undisturbed tropical rain forest from the spatial pattern of trees. Journal of ecology, 97 (1) : 97-108.

10. Laumonier Y., Bourgeois R., Pfund J.L. 2008. Accounting for the ecological dimension in participatory research and development : lessons learned from Indonesia and Madagascar. Ecology and society, 13 (1).

11. Boissière M., Sassen M. 2007. Mesurer l'importance de la biodiversité pour les sociétés forestières des pays du Sud. Une méthode d'investigation pluridisciplinaire = Assessing the importance of biodiversity for indigenous forest communities in developing countries. A multidisciplinary approach. Natures sciences sociétés, 15 (1) : 23-32.

12. Favreau B., Andrianoelisoa H.S., Nunez P., Vaillant A., Ramamonjisoa L., Danthu P., Bouvet J.M. 2007. Characterization of microsatellite markers in the rosewood (Dalbergia monticola Bosser & R. Rabev.). Molecular ecology notes, 7 (5) : 774-776.

13. Karsenty A., Pirard R. 2007. Changement climatique : faut-il récompenser la "déforestation évitée" ? = Tropical forests: The question of global public good and multilateral economic instruments for establishing an international regime. Natures sciences sociétés, 15 (4) : 357-369.

14. Loreau M., Oteng-Yeboah A., Arroyo M.T.K., Babin D., Barbault R., Donoghue M., Gadgil M., Häuser C., Heip C., Larigauderie A., Ma K., Mace G., Mooney H.A., Perrings C., Raven P.H., Sarukhan J., Schei P.J., Scholes R.J., Watson R.T. 2006. Diversity without representation. Nature, 442 (7100) : 245-246.

15. Sheil D., Boissière M. 2006. Local people may be the best allies in conservation. Nature, 440 (7086) : 868.
List of software developed within the unit

-TFSuite : software to plan, process and analyse forest inventories in Central Africa (applied in +3 million hectares in CAR and in Gabon)

-Software "Pistes" to automatically design forest road networks optimised to minimise forest degradation. Computerised modeling plateform for tropical forest dynamics (worldwide), with Capsis initiative

-Automatic control of illegal gold mining in French Guyana by remote sensing (transferred to Regional authorities and to ONF)
Total annual budget
2006 2007 2008
Total annual budget including salaries
 7 000 7 748 8 805
External contracts:
4 100 4 075 4 540
ANR 100
EU
1 500
Private sector 120
Others 2 370