(NEW ANIMATION) Riparian Buffers Can Help Mitigate Biodiversity in Oil Palm Agriculture

Along with the new paper "Riparian buffers can help mitigate biodiversity decline in oil palm agriculture" published on Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment led by Nicolas J Deere (@NicolasJDeere) and colleagues, comes an excellent animated video showing the benefits of riparian buffers for biodiversity.

Conducted in oil palm landscapes in Sabah, Malaysia, we surveyed eight different taxon (aquatic insect larvae, adult Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), dung beetles, fish, anurans, birds, small mammals, and large mammal) to discover if buffer width was the main predictor of species richness and abundance.

Riparian community composition relative to buffer width (red shades) and forest quality (blue shades). Compositional variation between plantation rivers compared to reference forest sites is expressed using the Sørensen similarity index (range 0–1, indicating complete taxonomic separation through to identical community structure). Solid lines indicate the mean of the posterior distribution, whereas shaded areas denote uncertainty, estimated from 95% BCIs. Donut charts (insets) demonstrate the mechanisms underpinning compositional differences (light and dark gray represent nestedness and turnover, respectively).

While the effect of wider buffer widths is varied among taxa, our results show that riparian buffer width can strongly influence the wildlife present, with larger widths supporting more species. One key finding is that the largest biodiversity gains are achieved by increasing relatively narrow buffers. Through the efforts of all researchers involved in this remarkable study and in collaboration with DID and EPD in Sabah to produce this animation by Science Animated, we encourage policy makers to specify width requirements for important taxa and various landscape contexts in order to deliver the best conservation outcomes in tropical agriculture landscapes.

You can read the full paper here:

https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2473

Find out more in this blog post here:

Riparian buffers can mitigate biodiversity declines in oil palm plantations

This animated video is also available in Bahasa Melayu here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjbNUxB0R4o