Summary

Over the course of this module you have examined many different types of interactions between individuals and species in tropical forest ecosystems. You have seen that there is an incredibly complex suite of relationships that take many different forms. Many Indigenous cultures argue that everything within an ecosystem is connected, and Western science is confirming this. What is much less clear is the effects of altering or removing an element from this network. This is critical for forest management: we need to know and understand the impact of removing one or more trees from a forest. Unfortunately, this information is often simply not available. In such circumstances, application of the precautionary principle would mean that no trees should be removed, but this may not an available option. Consequently, forest managers need to use their knowledge of forest to ecology to design interventions that they believe will have the least impact. They then need to monitor any effects (which is hugely challenging), and adjust their interventions based on the knowledge gained from the monitoring. This is rarely done, and as a result we continue to see forest degradation occurring as a result of forest management activities.

This is the last module dealing with topics of forest ecology. In the next and final module in this course, you will be looking at a number of case studies. These have been chosen to illustrate particular aspects of forest ecology, and to provide you with a feel for the many different types of tropical forest found across the Tropics.