Liam Hughes

Liam's research is focused on 'Assessing biodiversity and functional connectivity in Sumatra’s community-managed forests.'

Land-use change and resource extraction continue to impact tropical forests, bringing negative consequences for biodiversity, ecological functions and the livelihoods of people living nearby. In 2014, Indonesia began devolving the management rights of 12.7 million ha of the forest estate to local communities in one of the world’s largest social forestry programmes. The main aim of the social forestry programme is to alleviate poverty among rural communities while reducing deforestation. Recent research tracking forest cover and poverty in Sumatra and Kalimantan found the first five years of the scheme was mostly successful in achieving these two aims.

An important gap in social forestry research is the implications the schemes have on biodiversity. This limits our understanding of whether social forestry areas could be considered viable OECMs (Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures) or candidates for emerging biodiversity credit schemes. The weak evidence-base is in part due to the technical and financial challenges of monitoring biodiversity. While remote sensing technologies have greatly improved forest monitoring, technological applications to facilitate biodiversity monitoring in tropical countries have yet to be fully investigated in social forestry settings.

To address this, this project will develop efficient methodologies for monitoring biodiversity in two social forestry case study sites in Sumatra, Indonesia. Camera trap and bioacoustic surveys will be used to investigate biodiversity within the social forestry areas compared to nearby protected forest controls. This data will be combined with satellite-based remote sensing information to assess the environmental and anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity patterns across these multi-use sites, and to identify indicators for ecosystem recovery. Finally, the impact of Indonesia’s social forestry programme on the functional connectivity of landscapes will be assessed across Sumatra.

Liam is a member of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB).

• Conservation Biology
• Community-based conservation
• Biodiversity Monitoring
• Community Forestry
• Ecosystem Function
• Wildlife Trade  

Supervised by Dr Matthew Struebig, Professor Bob Smith and Dr Lindsay Banin (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UKCEH).