Future
What started out as a five-person initiative slowly gained momentum as funding for the BDFFP grew and became a successful midsize research project operated by a larger staff. This growth has allowed for continuious large-scale inventories of species’ response to fragmentation, which is a main focal point of research concerning future conservation (Bierregaard 2001).
One of the major advantages of this study is that it has been conducted very consistently over a long period of time. Experimentation over several decades allows for the occurrence of natural events, such as El Niño droughts, which are important facilitators of natural disturbance that could affect fragmentation.
Much more needs to be understood about forest fragments, however. As BDFFP data suggests, even small fragments can take centuries to stabilize their floristic composition and carbon storage after experiencing dramatic ecological changes (Laurance 2011).
The fundamental goals drawn from the BDFFP experiment are to preserve larger areas of land to ensure viable populations are maintained and to maintain the forests’ natural ecological processes. Due to the continuing impacts of deforestation on tropical forest composition and processes, it can be said that the ecological future of the Amazonian region is greatly tied to its economic future (Bierregaard 2001). Efforts should continue to be made in order to prevent disastrous edge effects resulting from fires, climate change, and human impact from commercial hunting and logging.
Over 30 years of research and data collection with the BDFFP experiment has led to many discoveries and important lessons for scientists, but has also faced many challenges, such as funding. Since the late 1990s, colonization and hunting have emerged as direct threats to the BDFFP. The paving of the 1100-km-long Manaus-Venezuela highway has increased forest colonization and logging (Laurance 2011). As the influx of humans continues into these lands, the conservation efforts of the BDFFP become increasingly important in order to prevent devastating effects on the surrounding forest ecosystems.
Read more about this topic: Biological Dynamics Of Forest Fragments Project
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“We must choose. Be a child of the past with all its crudities and imperfections, its failures and defeats, or a child of the future, the future of symmetry and ultimate success.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become “Golems,” they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)