Treefall gaps play important roles tropical rainforest ecology. But studies increasingly rely on models, remote sensing, and few intensively studied research sites, mostly in the Neotropics. Here we studied the basic parameters of gap dynamics- size, causes and frequency of treefall gaps in a lower montane primary forest on the southern flank of the central range of Papua New Guinea.
Forest carbon emission mitigation schemes seek to protect tropical forest, combat effects of climate change, and offer potential cash and development opportunities. Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDDþ) projects based on a foundation of accurate carbon stock assessment provide such an opportunity for Papua New Guinea. The objective of this study was to quantify the carbon stock of the central forests of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, and identify factors that underpin any observed variation within it.
We investigated traditional coral reef management practices at Ahus Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, to evaluate their social role in the community and potential to conserve reef ecosystems. For generations, Ahus Islanders have prohibited spear and net fishing within six delineated areas of their reef lagoon. One to three times per year, fish are briefly harvested from the restricted areas to provide food for ceremonial occasions.
In an effort to deliver better outcomes for people and the ecosystems they depend on, many governments and civil society groups are engaging natural resource users in collaborative management arrangements (frequently called comanagement). However, there are few empirical studies demonstrating the social and institutional conditions conducive to successful comanagement outcomes, especially in small-scale fisheries.
This study explores the social, economic, and ecological context within which communities in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia use adaptive coral reef management. We tested whether periodic closures had positive effects on reef resources, and found that both the biomass and the average size of fishes commonly caught in Indo-Pacific subsistence fisheries were greater inside areas subject to periodic closures compared to sites with year-round open access.
The coral reefs of Papua New Guinea are among the most species diverse in the world, support an important artisanal fishery, but lack an effective national conservation programme. Increased commercialization, population growth, promotion of fisheries development projects, and the live reef food fish trade are expected to increase demand for the country’s reef fish.
Small-scale fisheries provide many benefits to coastal communities in the Indo-Pacific region, including food security, improved nutrition and cash income. However, increasing engagement with the global economy is exerting additional pressure on marine resources and opportunities to engage in alternative livelihoods are often limited by remoteness and a lack of land-based farming opportunities.
Tambu is a well respected concept in Melanesian societies and represents a periodic cultural restriction on harvesting for the purpose of fulfilling customary obligations and restocking resources. As a result it has been suggested as the basis for conservation and sustainability in Melanesia. One species subject to tambu management is the Admiralty cuscus (Spilocuscus kraemeri), an arboreal marsupial endemic to Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, where it is a major source of terrestrial protein for forest-dwelling villagers.
Across the globe, many nations have gone through a period of unmanaged wildlife consumption characterized by massive population crashes and extinction of vertebrate species. The dramatic declines of useful animal resources because of this over-consumption have often been followed by a determined effort to regulate and manage wildlife consumption, often too late to avoid extinction and even more often too late to enable the resource population to recover to harvestable levels.
Artisanal fishing on coral reefs in Papua New Guinea is an important livelihood activity that is managed primarily at the level of local communities. Pockets of overexploitation exist and are expected to increase with plans for increased commercialization
HOME RANGES, MOVEMENT, AND DEN USE IN LONG-BEAKED ECHIDNAS, ZAGLOSSUS BARTONI, FROM PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Long-beaked echidnas (Zaglossus), which are endemic to New Guinea, are the largest and least-studied of the 3 extant genera of monotremes. Zaglossus is listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union and data regarding the natural history of long-beaked echidnas are critical to efforts to protect these animals. However, no detailed studies of the ecology of this genus have been published.
Numerous New Guinea birds, mostly psittaciforms and columbiforms, have been recorded feeding on soil. This study documents geophagy in the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (CMWMA) in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. We present the first documented case of geophagy in the palm cockatoo Probosciger aterrimus and in up to 11 other species.
Clearing forests for oil palm plantations is a major threat to tropical terrestrial biodiversity, and may potentially have large impacts on downstream marine ecosystems (e.g., coral reefs). However, little is known about the impacts of runoff from oil palmplantations, so it is not clear howoil palmdevelopment should be modified to minimize the risk of degrading marine ecosystems, or howmarine conservation plans should be modified to account for the impacts of oil palm development.
The shell of the Manus green tree snail Papustyla pulcherrima is renowned for its beauty and is subject to international protection under CITES, having been harvested intensively in the past. To determine its threat status,
and whether further conservation action is justified, an inexpensive Wisdom of Crowds approach was used to estimate the change in relative density of the snail between 1998 and 2013.
Within the Pacific over the last two decades there has been greater recognition of the pre-existing tools within indigenous communities for natural resource management. Periodic tambu (Tok Pisin: a prohibition) is an indigenous resource management tool often used across Papua New Guinea. On Manus Island terrestrial periodic tambu areas are characterised by a cycle of resource closure followed by instantaneous harvest.
To examine species richness patterns in Papua New Guinea’s terrestrialvertebrates test for geographical congruence between the four classes, and between lizard and snake subgroups. To assess the environmental correlates of Papua New Guinean terrestrial-vertebrate richness, and contrast effects of varying analytical resolution and correction for spatial autocorrelation.
This is the report for the Reefs at Risk Revisited analysis. Reefs at Risk Revisited is a high-resolution update of the original global analysis, Reefs at Risk: A Map-Based Indicator of Threats to the World’s Coral Reefs. Reefs at Risk Revisited uses a global map of coral reefs at 500-m resolution, which is 64 times more detailed than the 4-km resolution map used in the 1998 analysis, and benefits from improvements in many global data sets used to evaluate threats to reefs (most threat data are at 1 km resolution, which is 16 times more detailed than those used in the 1998 analysis).
This dataset contains GIS data (raster and shapefiles) for the local threats to coral reefs: coastal development, integrated local, marine pollution, overfishing, and watershed pollution.
Zip file containing NetCDF files for both zonal and meridional current velocities (meters/second) for 5 day temporal resolution for the years 2000-2019 in the WGS84 coordinate system (EPSG:4326).
This dataset contains rasters and a metadata file for global mean monthly sea surface temperature (°C) from 2010-2019. Rasters are in WGS84 coordinate system (EPSG 4326). Sea surface temperature is the temperature of the top millimeter of the ocean's surface. Sea surface temperatures influence weather, including hurricanes, as well as plant and animal life in the ocean. Like Earth's land surface, sea surface temperatures are warmer near the equator and colder near the poles. Currents like giant rivers move warm and cold water around the world's oceans.