Luke Gibson and co-workers provide an important global assessment of the impact of disturbance and land conversion on biodiversity in tropical forests (Nature 478, 378–381; 2011). But their meta-analysis of 138 studies overlooks the Congo basin, the second-largest continuous area of rainforest in the world; moreover, only 12 studies are located in Africa. This omission is not the fault of the authors, but is symptomatic of the lack of recent and accessible legacy data for this region.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which contains 98 million hectares of rainforest (60% of the Congo basin forest), is also poorly represented in studies beyond biodiversity. Take, for example, a study that estimates the carbon sink in the world's forests on the basis of inventory data and long-term ecosystem studies (Y. Pan et al. Science 333, 988–993; 2011). The study's estimate for carbon stocks in intact tropical forest across Africa is based on a network of 79 monitoring sites, yet only ten of these are in the DRC, all in the same forest reserve in the northeastern Ituri province.
Large scientific, logistic and training efforts are needed to establish permanent monitoring sites in the Congo basin's tropical forests and woodlands, and to connect those sites to global networks.
Countries such as the DRC must also identify and monitor forest biodiversity and carbon stocks within the framework of international climate and conservation policies, such as the United Nations REDD programme (for 'reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation'). This will help to preserve the Congo basin forest, where deforestation so far remains modest compared with that in the Amazon region and in southeast Asia.
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Verbeeck, H., Boeckx, P. & Steppe, K. Tropical forests: Include Congo basin. Nature 479, 179 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/479179b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/479179b
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