Systematic review of effects on biodiversity from oil palm production
By S. Savilaakso, Claude A. Garcia, J. García-Ulloa, J. Ghazoul, M. Groom, M. Guariguata, Y. Laumonier, Roberto Nasi, G. Petrokofsky, Jake L. Snaddon and 1 more. Environmental Evidence, 2014
161 citations recorded by the source corpus.
BackgroundDuring the past decade there has been a growing interest in bioenergy, driven by concerns about global climate change, growing energy demand, and depleting fossil fuel reserves. The predicted rise in biofuel demand makes it important to understand the potential consequences of expanding biofuel cultivation.A systematic review was conducted on the biodiversity impacts of three first-generation biofuel crops (oil palm, soybean, and jatropha) in the tropics. The study focused on the impacts on species richness, abundance (total number of individuals or occurrences), community composition, and ecosystem functions related to species richness and community composition.MethodsLiterature was searched using an a priori protocol. Owing to a lack of available studies of biodiversity impacts from soybean and jatropha that met the inclusion criteria set out in the systematic review protocol, all analyses focused on oil palm. The impacts of oil palm cultivation on species richness, abundance, and community similarity were summarized quantitatively; other results were summarized narratively.ResultsThe searches returned 9143 articles after duplicate removal of which 25 met the published inclusion criteria and were therefore accepted for the final review. Twenty of them had been conducted in Malaysia and two thirds were on arthropods.Overall, oil palm plantations had reduced species richness compared with primary and secondary forests, and the composition of species assemblages changed significantly after forest conversion to oil palm plantation. Abundance showed species-specific responses and hence, the overall abundance was not significantly different between plantations and forest areas. Only one study reported how different production systems (smallholdings vs. industrial estates) affect biodiversity. No studies that examined the effects on ecosystem functions of reduced species richness or changes in community composition met the inclusion criteria. Neither were there studies that reported how areas managed under different standards (e.g. different certification systems) affect biodiversity and ecosystem function.ConclusionsOur review suggests that oil palm plantations have reduced species richness compared with primary and secondary forests, and the composition of species assemblage changes significantly after forest conversion to oil palm plantation. Effects of different production systems on biodiversity and ecosystem function are clear knowledge gaps that should be addressed in future research.Trial registrationCEE10-013
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6e5b31b858506b08334a23231051538979aa806e
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Citations in the corpus
- The Role of Google Scholar in Evidence Reviews and Its Applicability to Grey Literature Searching (2015, methodology): “Search results were extracted for records ordered both by relevance and by publication date (newest first), with the exception of SR2, SR5 and SR7, where totals of 230, 1,058 and 1,071 records respectively (all returned) were obtained and extracted in full.”
- Impacts of oil palm plantations on changes in environmental heterogeneity and Heteroptera (Gerromorpha and Nepomorpha) diversity (2017, background): “2014; Carvalho Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10841-017-9959-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.”
- The palm oil global value chain: Implications for economic growth and socialand environmental sustainability (2017, result): “The authors also indicate that the results may differ for vertebrates, as none of the studies in the meta-analysis looked at the abundance of vertebrate taxa in forests compared with plantations (Savilaakso et al. 2014).”