New Publication - Riparian buffers act as microclimatic refugia in oil palm landscapes

Study location & design. Source Williamson et al 2020.

Riparian buffers are established around agricultural landscapes, such as oil palm plantations, to maintain water quality, and support biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and landscape connectivity. However, little is known about these buffers' microclimate (i.e. temperature and humidity) and how biodiversity may be impacted.

In a recent publication in the Journal of Applied Ecology, we investigated how riparian buffers could act as microclimatic refugia by comparing field-based microclimatic data with remotely sensed vegetation quality and topography (LiDAR) and dung beetle community data.

Our study found that the core of riparian buffers are cooler and wetter than surrounding oil palm plantations, but are warmer and drier than continuous forest controls. Cooler and wetter microclimates were also strongly associated with high vegetation quality and topographic sheltering. We also showed that the width of riparian buffers was important for protecting microclimate, where microclimatic conditions about 80 to 100m from the oil palm edge were indistinguishable from continuous forest controls. Finally, we found that dung beetle communities were negatively affected by hotter, drier and narrower buffers.

Based on our findings, we suggest that having wider riparian buffers of about 80m, and restoring degraded buffers would increase the environmental sustainability of oil palm landscapes. For a neat summary of this study, check out Joe's Twitter thread here!