What is the Forest Transition Curve?

was created by FTA scientists to understand how human activities affect the landscape over time. It allows researchers to predict the effects (positive and negative) of economic development on tree-covered landscapes. 

Complex land-use decisions that affect forests today will impact ecosystem services including carbon storage, soil improvement and water-cycle regulation for decades. Once lost, these benefits can return slowly with reforestation and agroforestry.  

This 400 km² conservation park in West Java province, Indonesia is a water catchment area, providing clean drinking water to the surrounding area. It also homes a wealth of biodiversity including species such as Javan leopards and silvery gibbons.

These trees were cut down for timber near a project site for the FORETS initiative in Weko, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The striking difference between logged ground and old-growth in this picture illustrates how fast forest transitions can happen.

These farm workers are heading to their next job on an agroforestry farm in Loreto, Peru. Farming that incorporates trees is one way to preserve ecosystems while also improving livelihoods. The trees on agroforestry farms often produce valuable products to sell, for example.

Agriculture is essential to feed earth’s expanding population. However, when too much land is converted from forests to monocrop farms, most of the ecosystem services of the original forest are lost. 

In this example of annual crops, farmers in Ethiopia are growing and testing different wheat varieties, including durum, to see how adaptable they are in different climates. This is important because biodiverse crops are more resilient; if one variety dies, another may survive. 

When farm-soil nutrients are depleted, the land must be left to either grow back with grasses and shrubs or enriched with large amounts of fertilizer, which pollutes the environment. If left to grow, grasses bring back some of the lost ecosystem benefits of the forests. 

These grasslands near Yangambi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) maintain ground cover for the soil and offer food to migratory animals. 

When carefully managed, a mosaic of tree plantations, agroforests and wood farms – forests that are planted in order to harvest wood – can begin restoring some ecosystem benefits that were lost from old-growth forest.  

Mosaic landscapes like the one pictured have the potential to restore ecosystem services while also allowing societies to develop sustainably and produce the food they need. This landscape approach is key for humans to co-exist and thrive together with the natural world.