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Tina Christmann
DPhil student

Montane ecosystems are suffering despite forest recovery and the impact is far reaching. A study by researchers at the Environmental Change Institute has found forest recovery across the Andes is mostly disrupted, arrested or unsuccessful.

Tina Christmann, ECI DPhil student is the lead author of Disrupted montane forest recovery hinders biodiversity conservation in the tropical Andes, published in Global Ecology and Biogeography. She said: “With an increasing global push for ecosystem restoration, forest transitions in the Andes harbour large opportunities for intentional forest recovery.

"With 73% of potential recovery areas not undergoing expected forest recovery over a 15-year period, natural regeneration by itself is not a sufficient solution to restore biodiversity and ecosystem services. Although many small-scale field studies across the tropics have shown that montane forest recovery is often unsuccessful, our study demonstrates that this trend also translates to the continental scale."

Isaías Cjuno Turpo, Research Assistant and Tina Christmann, Researcher

Tina added: “Active restoration or assisted interventions are needed to speed up forest recovery, and management decisions will need to be tailored on a local or regional basis to choose the best methods to overcome regional and local barriers to forest recovery. With many international partnerships and the private sector pledging to restore ecosystems for carbon, livelihood and biodiversity goals, suitable areas need to be found where active restoration can make a positive on-the-ground difference and outperform natural regeneration.”

Tina’s work began during the coronavirus pandemic when she carried out remote research using satellite data analysis before later visiting the Andes. She said: “We show that long-term time series of satellite data can aid with monitoring forest recovery across large mountain ranges and can help to locate priority regions for intervention.

Many other highly biodiverse tropical mountain ranges, in addition to the Andes, exhibit difficult biophysical and socio-economic conditions for forest recovery, and this method can be applied across the globe to identify restoration hotspots and steer management interventions.”