7-10 September 2005, Danum, Borneo, Malaysia

Biodiversity and Carbon storage - Meeting organised by the DIVERSITAS Core Project ecoSERVICES

The workshop will explore the relationship between biodiversity and C storage in forests and plantation forests. Carbon sequestration schemes have only just begun to incorporate biodiversity considerations and to ask how changes in biodiversity could increase or decrease C storage. The workshop aims to review the existing evidence, inspire future research and link academic research with end-users. The Biodiversity and C storage meeting will be held at the Danum Valley Field Centre Sabah, North Borneo, Malaysia. We anticipate that the meeting will generate:

• a forward-look agenda setting paper
• A body of papers that could form the basis of a short book or special issue of a journal.

Objective

The overall aim is to examine, from ecological and socio-economic perspectives, how changes in biodiversity may affect carbon storage and how both concerns can be taken into account in managing ecosystems.

Format

There is far too little research in this area to require a synthesis meeting but on the other hand there is plenty of relevant background information that will be helpful to review; the meeting will therefore be somewhere between a conference and a workshop with a mixture of talks and discussion sessions. Danum Valley is unusual in having primary forest of high conservation value as well as forest rehabilitation and enrichment planting for carbon storage, plus the new biodiversity experiment. The meeting will therefore take Danum as a sort of case study to provide a focus for the discussion.

Structure

• The opening session will set the scene by giving an overview and history of the local situation.
• The second session features presentations from each of the four existing forest biodiversity projects so that everyone is up to date with the research resources that exist.
• DIVERSITAS and the Global Carbon Project want to develop an agenda for new research at the intersection of the biodiversity and carbon research areas and the third session will be a workshop led by Mike Apps and Andy Hector to make a start on this task.
• Session four features several presentations on tropical forest ecology as a foundation for understanding the link between biodiversity and carbon storage in these systems.
• The final session will bring in a socio-economic perspective on how to combine biodiversity and carbon concerns in ecosystem management.
• Saturday provides optional fieldtrips including to the new biodiversity experiment.

Meeting Programme

Wednesday 7th September 2005 afternoon/early evening session

Arrival, introduction and local context
• Andy Hector and Michel Loreau: The meeting, DIVERSITAS etc.
• Waidi Sinun: History and overview of research at Danum Valley Field Centre.
• Sam Mannan/Dr Lee Ying Fah: Forests and Forestry in Sabah - the local context.
• Charles Godfrey: the Royal Society SE Asian Rainforest Research Programme.
• Hans Verweij: Review of a Pre-Kyoto Rainforest Rehabilitation and Carbon

Sequestration Project in Sabah Malaysia.

Thursday 8th - Morning session

Forest functional ecology and biodiversity experiments
• David Burslem: Mechanisms that maintain diversity and distribution of tropical tree species.
• Andy Hector: the Sabah biodiversity experiment and the ecology of palaeotropical dipterocarp forests.
• Catherine Potvin: The Panama experiment and the ecology of Neotropical forests.
• Julia Koricheva: The Finnish experiment - "Forest diversity effects on insect and mammalian herbivory in boreal and temperate ecosystems".
• Detlef Schulze (or representative): the BIOTREE project.
• Questions and discussion.

Thursday 8th - Afternoon session

Workshop: Developing a research agenda at the intersection of Biodiversity and Carbon research
• Introduction and Aims: Andy Hector.
• Mike Apps: The carbon cycle and the Global Carbon Project.

Friday 9th - Morning session - Tropical forest ecology and C storage

• Christian Koerner: Functional aspects of forest tree species diversity.
• Peter Stoll: Local diversity and species interactions in a tropical forest.
• Yadvinder Malhi: Relationships between tree diversity and woody carbon production and storage within forest plots across the Amazon basin.
• Dan Bunker: Biodiversity loss and above-ground carbon storage in the BCI forest dynamics plot.
• Questions and discussion.

Friday 9th - Afternoon session - Economic Approaches to biodiversity and C sequestration

• Michelle Pinard: (To be confirmed).
• Ruth Nussbaum: High Conservation Value Forests - a practical approach to conservation in an economic framework.
• Pedro Moura Costa: The Carbon Market, Land Use and Forestry and Biodiversity Implications.
• John O'Niles: Leveraging carbon dollars for biodiversity conservation - the value of multiple-benefit projects.
• Andy Hector/Michel Loreau - Synthesis, wrap-up, planning etc.

Saturday 10th - Fieldsite visits.