D. Gaveau

• Ph.D
• Managing Director, Scientist, Landscape Ecologist at TheTreeMap

Oil palm is a controversial crop, primarily because it is associated with negative environmental impacts such as tropical deforestation. Mapping the crop and its characteristics, such as age, is crucial for informing public and policy discussions regarding these impacts. Oil palm has received substantial mapping efforts, but accurate and up-to-date...

Wang et al. (Nature 623, 340—350; 2023)1 used satellite observations and phenological signatures to map and estimate the extent of planted rubber (Hevea brasiliensis Müll.Arg.), and associated deforestation, for eight Southeast Asian countries. Their assessment implies that planted rubber may have caused over 4 Mha of deforestation since 1993 — a v...

As actors in tropical agricultural commodity supply chains implement commitments to end deforestation, they risk exacerbating social inequities by excluding smallholder farmers, who are important producers of many tropical commodity crops. Here, we explore the potential for independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesia to participate in zero-defor...

Oil palm is a controversial crop, primarily because it is associated with negative environmental impacts such as tropical deforestation. Mapping the crop and its characteristics, such as age, is crucial for informing public and policy discussions regarding these impacts. Oil palm has received substantial mapping efforts, but up-to-date accurate oil...

Wang et al. (Nature 623, 340—350; 2023)1 used satellite observations and phenological signatures to estimate the extent of planted rubber (Hevea brasiliensis Müll.Arg.) and associated deforestation for eight Southeast Asian countries. Their map implies that planted rubber has caused more than 4 Mha of deforestation since 1993 — a value greater than...

Oil palm ( Elaeis guinensis ) is a controversial crop. To assess its sustainability, we analysed the contribution of different types of plantations (smallholder, industrial and unproductive) towards meeting six Sustainable Development Goals. Using spatial econometric methods and data from 25,067 villages in Sumatra, Indonesia, we revealed that unpr...

Demand for coconut is expected to rise, but the global distribution of coconut palm has been studied little, which hinders the discussion of its impacts. Here, we produced the first 20 m global coconut palm layer using a U-Net model that was trained on annual Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 composites for the year 2020. The overall accuracy was 99.04 ± 0...

Vegetable oil crops cover over half of global agricultural land and have varying environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Demand for coconut oil is expected to rise, but the global distribution of coconut is understudied, which hinders the discussion of its impacts. Here, we present the first 20-meter global coconut layer, produced using deep learn...

Indonesia is embarking on an ambitious relocation of its capital city to Kalimantan, Borneo, bringing with it major urban and road infrastructure. Yet, despite being one of the world's most biologically diverse regions, the potential implications of this development for wildlife have yet to be fully assessed. We explored the potential impacts of th...

Arctic fires can release large amounts of carbon from permafrost peatlands. Satellite observations reveal that fires burned ~4.7 million hectares in 2019 and 2020, accounting for 44% of the total burned area in the Siberian Arctic for the entire 1982–2020 period. The summer of 2020 was the warmest in four decades, with fires burning an unprecedente...

Fire activity is declining globally due to intensifying land management, but trends remain uncertain for the humid tropics, particularly Equatorial Asia. Here, we report that rates of fire events deemed severe (≥75th severity percentile of 2002-2019) and very severe (≥90th percentile) for Indonesia declined 19-27% and 23-34% over 2002-2019, respect...

Assessing where wildlife populations are at risk from future habitat loss is particularly important for land-use planning and avoiding biodiversity declines. Combining projections of future deforestation with species density information provides an improved way to anticipate such declines. Using the critically endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo py...

Much concern about tropical deforestation focuses on oil palm plantations, but their impacts remain poorly quantified. Using nation-wide interpretation of satellite imagery, and sample-based error calibration, we estimated the impact of large-scale (industrial) and smallholder oil palm plantations on natural old-growth (“primary”) forests from 2001...

Many nations are challenged by landscape fires. A confident knowledge of the area and distribution of burning is crucial to monitor these fires and to assess how they might best be reduced. Given the differences that arise using different detection approaches, and the uncertainties surrounding burned-area estimates, their relative merits require ev...

The rich forests of Indonesian New Guinea are understudied and threatened. We used satellite data to examine annual forest loss, road development and plantation expansion from 2001 to 2019, then developed a model to predict future deforestation. No previous studies have attempted such a detailed assessment of past and future deforestation. In 2019,...

Assessing where wildlife populations are at risk from future habitat loss is particularly important for land-use planning and avoiding biodiversity declines. Combining projections of future deforestation with species density information provides an improved way to anticipate such declines. Using the endemic and critically endangered Bornean orangut...

West Papua's Bintuni Bay is Indonesia's largest contiguous mangrove block, only second to the world's largest mangrove in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh. As almost 40% of these mangroves are designated production forest, we assessed the effects of commercial logging on forest structure, biomass recovery, and soil carbon stocks and burial in five-year i...

Like many tropical forest nations, Indonesia is challenged by landscape fires. A confident understanding of the area and distribution of burning is crucial to understanding the implications of these fires and how they might best be reduced. Given uncertainties surrounding different burned-area estimates, and the substantial differences that arise u...

Oil seed crops, especially oil palm, are among the most rapidly expanding agricultural land uses, and their expansion is known to cause significant environmental damage. Accordingly, these crops often feature in public and policy debates which are hampered or biased by a lack of accurate information on environmental impacts. In particular, the lack...

The rich forests of Indonesian New Guinea are threatened. We used satellite data to examine annual forest loss, road development and plantation expansion from 2001 to 2019, then developed a model to predict future deforestation in this understudied region. In 2019, 34.29 million hectares (Mha), or 83% of Indonesian New Guinea, supported old-growth...

Much concern about tropical deforestation focuses on oil palm plantations, but their impacts remain poorly quantified. Using satellites, we estimated annual expansion of large-scale (industrial) and smallholder oil palm plantations and their overlap with forest loss from 2001 to 2019 in Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer. Over ninetee...

Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils and, in particular, palm oil, illustrates these competing demands and trade-offs. Palm oil accounts for ~40% of the current global annual demand for vegetable oil as food, ani...

The carbon-dense peatlands of Indonesia are a landscape of global importance undergoing rapid land-use change. Here, peat drained for agricultural expansion increases the risk of large-scale uncontrolled fires. Several solutions to this complex environmental, humanitarian and economic crisis have been proposed, such as forest protection measures an...

Oil seed crops, especially oil palm, are among the most rapidly expanding agricultural land uses, and their expansion is known to cause significant environmental damage. Accordingly, these crops often feature in public and policy debates, which are hampered or biased by a lack of accurate information on environmental impacts. In particular, the lac...

Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils in general, and palm oil in particular, is perhaps the most controversial illustration of these trade-offs. Global annual demand for vegetable oil for food, animal feed and fu...

OPEN ACCESS HERE: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12622 The links between plantation expansion and deforestation in Borneo are debated. We used satellite imagery to map annual loss of old-growth forests, expansion of industrial plantations (oil palm and pulpwood), and their overlap in Borneo from 2001 to 2017. In 17 years, for...

When development impacts a broad landscape and causes the loss of multiple ecosystem services, decisions about which of these impacts to offset must be made. We use industrial oil-palm developments in Kalimantan and quantify the potential for restoration to offset oil-palm impacts on carbon storage and biodiversity. We developed a unique backcastin...

Around 16 Mha of land is estimated to be under oil palm agriculture in insular Southeast Asia. There is a growing need to verify that palm oil is produced without causing negative environmental effects. Monitoring changes in the extent and condition of oil palm plantations by remote sensing is the first necessary step. The changing appearance of oi...

In June 2013, the Malay Peninsula experienced severe smoke pollution, with daily surface particulate matter (PM) concentrations in Singapore greater than 350 μg/m³, over 2 times the air quality standard for daily mean PM10 set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Unlike most haze episodes in the Malay Peninsula in recent decades (e.g., the...

The agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sectors contribute substantially to the net global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To reduce these emissions under the Paris Agreement, effective mitigation actions are needed that require engagement of multiple stakeholders. Emission reduction also requires that accurate, consisten...

Deforestation and draining of the peatlands in equatorial SE Asia has greatly increased their flammability, and in September–October 2015 a strong El Niño-related drought led to further drying and to widespread burning across parts of Indonesia, primarily on Kalimantan and Sumatra. These fires resulted in some of the worst sustained outdoor air pol...

Unsustainable exploitation of natural resources is increasingly affecting the highly biodiverse tropics [1, 2]. Although rapid developments in remote sensing technology have permitted more precise estimates of land-cover change over large spatial scales [3, 4, 5], our knowledge about the effects of these changes on wildlife is much more sparse [6,...

Tropical rainforests, naturally resistant to fire when intact, are increasingly vulnerable to burning due to ongoing forest perturbation and, possibly, climatic changes. Industrial-scale forest degradation and conversion are increasing fire occurrence, and interactions with climate anomalies such as El Niño induced droughts can magnify the extent a...

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a contagious, severe and often lethal form of hemorrhagic fever in humans. The association of EVD outbreaks with forest clearance has been suggested previously but many aspects remained uncharacterized. We used remote sensing techniques to investigate the association between deforestation in time and space, with EVD out...

Worldwide many businesses have recently pledged to sourcing agricultural and timber products exclusively from deforestation and fire‐free supply chains. Geoinvestigations—monitoring the activities of plantation companies using satellites and concession maps—are now applied to identify which companies breach their commitments and regulations. We inv...

The first International Peat Congress (IPC) held in the tropics - in Kuching (Malaysia) - brought together over 1000 international peatland scientists and industrial partners from across the world (“International Peat Congress with over 1000 participants!,” 2016). The congress covered all aspects of peatland ecosystems and their management, with a...

Forest-driven water and energy cycles are poorly integrated into regional, national, continental and global decision-making on climate change adaptation, mitigation, land use and water management. This constrains humanity's ability to protect our planet's climate and life-sustaining functions. The substantial body of research we review reveals that...

New plantations can either cause deforestation by replacing natural forests or avoid this by using previously cleared areas. The extent of these two situations is contested in tropical biodiversity hotspots where objective data are limited. Here, we explore delays between deforestation and the establishment of industrial tree plantations on Borneo...

The first International Peat Congress (IPC) held in the tropics - in Kuching (Malaysia) - brought together over 1000 international peatland scientists and industrial partners from across the world ("International Peat Congress with over 1000 participants!," 2016). The congress covered all aspects of peatland ecosystems and their management, with a...

The 2015–2016 strong El Niño event has had a dramatic impact on the amount of Indonesian biomass burning, with the El Niño-driven drought further desiccating the already-drier-than-normal landscapes that are the result of decades of peatland draining, widespread deforestation, anthropogenically driven forest degradation and previous large fire even...

The number of primates on the brink of extinction continues to grow due to threats such as habitat loss, hunting, and disease. The need to respond with effective conservation measures has therefore never been greater. This edited book brings together an international team of contributing authors with wide-ranging expertise to provide a comprehensiv...

Nature Communications 6: Article number:6819 (2015); Published 14 April 2015; Updated 14 June 2016 The original version of this Article contained an error in the spelling of the author Hugh P. Possingham, which was incorrectly given as Hugh P. Posssingham. This has now been corrected in both the PDFand HTML versions of the Article.

The roles of forest and wetland ecosystems in regulating flooding have drawn increasing attention in the contexts of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. However, data on floods are scarce in many of the countries where people are most exposed and vulnerable to their impacts. Here, our separate analyses of village interview survey...

In September and October 2015 widespread forest and peatland fires burned over large parts of maritime southeast Asia, most notably Indonesia, releasing large amounts of terrestrially-stored carbon into the atmosphere, primarily in the form of CO2, CO and CH4. With a mean emission rate of 11.3 Tg CO2 per day during Sept-Oct 2015, emissions from the...

Supplementary Information of Major atmospheric emissions from peat fires in Southeast Asia during non-drought years: evidence from the 2013 Sumatran fires.

The 2015–2016 strong El Niño event has had a dramatic impact on the amount of Indonesian biomass burning, with the El Niño driven drought further desiccating the already drier than normal landscapes that are the result of decades of peatland draining, widespread deforestation, anthropogenically-driven forest degradation, and previous large fire eve...

Worldwide many businesses have recently pledged to sourcing agricultural and timber products exclusively from deforestation and fire-free supply chains. Geoinvestigations—monitoring the activities of plantation companies using satellites and concession maps—are now applied to identify which companies breach their commitments and regulations. We inv...

Positive news about Sumatran orangutans is rare. The species is critically endangered because of forest loss and poaching, and therefore, determining the impact of future land-use change on this species is important. To date, the total Sumatran orangutan population has been estimated at 6600 individuals. On the basis of new transect surveys, we est...

In many parts of the world local people are convinced that forests, trees and rainfall are related in more than one way: forests and trees not only depend on rainfall but help to generate it. Scientists confronted with this perspective have always denied such effects, or at best been ‘agnostic’, as it seemed impossible in their data to find evidenc...

Forest and peatland fires in Indonesia emit large quantities of smoke leading to poor air quality across Equatorial Asia. Marlier et al (2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 085005) explore the contribution of fires occurring on oil palm, timber (wood pulp and paper) and natural forest logging concessions to smoke emissions and exposure of human populations...

Fire emissions associated with land cover change and land management contribute to the concentrations of atmospheric pollutants, which can affect regional air quality and climate. Mitigating these impacts requires a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between fires and different land cover change trajectories and land management strateg...

Balancing economic development with international commitments to protect biodiversity is a global challenge. Achieving this balance requires an understanding of the possible consequences of alternative future scenarios for a range of stakeholders. We employ an integrated economic and environmental planning approach to evaluate four alternative futu...

There is growing recognition that selectively logged tropical forests retain high conservation value (Gibson et al. 2011). In their editorial, Laurance and Edwards (Front Ecol Environ 2014; 12[3]: 147) drew attention to the vulnerability of forests after logging and proposed several highly pertinent strategies to minimize subsequent biodiversity lo...

Responses of biodiversity to changes in both land cover and climate are recognized [ 1 ] but still poorly understood [ 2 ]. This poses significant challenges for spatial planning as species could shift, contract, expand, or maintain their range inside or outside protected areas [ 2–4 ]. We examine this problem in Borneo, a global biodiversity hotsp...

Aim We demonstrate a robust approach for predicting and mapping threats and population trends of wildlife species, invaluable for understanding where to target conservation resources. We used the endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) as our case study to facilitate and strengthen conservation efforts by the Indonesian government to stabiliz...

Habitat loss and climate change pose a double jeopardy for many threatened taxa, making the identification of optimal habitat for the future a conservation priority. Using a case study of the endangered Bornean orang-utan, we identify environmental refuges by integrating bioclimatic models with projected deforestation and oil-palm agriculture suita...

Habitat destruction and overhunting are two major drivers of mammal population declines and extinctions in tropical forests. The construction of roads can be a catalyst for these two threats. In Southeast Asia, the impacts of roads on mammals have not been well-documented at a regional scale. Before evidence-based conservation strategies can be dev...

Trans-boundary haze events in Southeast Asia are associated with large forest and peatland fires in Indonesia. These episodes of extreme air pollution usually occur during drought years induced by climate anomalies from the Pacific (El Niño Southern Oscillation) and Indian Oceans (Indian Ocean Dipole). However, in June 2013 - a non-drought year - S...

This study seeks to understand children's perceptions of their present and future environments in the highly biodiverse and rapidly changing landscapes of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. We analyzed drawings by children (target age 10–15 years) from 22 villages, which show how children perceive the present conditions of forests and wildlife surround...

The native forests of Borneo have been impacted by selective logging, fire, and conversion to plantations at unprecedented scales since industrial-scale extractive industries began in the early 1970s. There is no island-wide documentation of forest clearance or logging since the 1970s. This creates an information gap for conservation planning, espe...

CIFOR Infobrief 71, Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia

The natural forest cover of Borneo has been impacted by timber extraction, converted to plantations or cleared for other uses at unprecedented scales since industrial-scale extractive industries began in early 1970s. Few accurate data describe where and how much forest area has been cleared and impacted by timber extraction. This creates an informa...

We ascertained villagers’ perceptions about the importance of forests for their livelihoods and health through 1,837 reliably answered interviews of mostly male respondents from 185 villages in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. Variation in these perceptions related to several environmental and social variables, as shown in classification and regres...

We ascertained villagers' perceptions about the importance of forests for their livelihoods and health through 1,837 reliably answered interviews of mostly male respondents from 185 villages in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. Variation in these perceptions related to several environmental and social variables, as shown in classification and regres...

Combining protected areas with natural forest timber concessions may sustain larger forest landscapes than is possible via protected areas alone. However, the role of timber concessions in maintaining natural forest remains poorly characterized. An estimated 57% (303,525 km2) of Kalimantan's land area (532,100 km2) was covered by natural forest in...

Supporting information describing how control variables were derived. This file includes Figure S1, Figure S2, and Figure S3. (DOC)

Combining protected areas with natural forest timber concessions may sustain larger forest landscapes than is possible via protected areas alone. However, the role of timber concessions in maintaining natural forest remains poorly characterized. An estimated 57% (303,525 km2) of Kalimantan's land area (532,100 km2) was covered by natural forest in...

The geographic distribution of Bornean orang-utans and its overlap with existing land-use categories (protected areas, logging and plantation concessions) is a necessary foundation to prioritize conservation planning. Based on an extensive orang-utan survey dataset and a number of environmental variables, we modelled an orang-utan distribution map....

The Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in southern Sumatra (Indonesia) has been on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites since 2004. Home to tigers, elephants, and rare Sumatran rhinos, the Park is also home to numerous squatters since the early 1970s. Part of the Park was restored after forcible evictions in the 1980s. However, since the end of...