Abstract
Forest loss is occurring at alarming rates across the globe. The pine rockland forests of Andros, The Bahamas, likely represent some of the largest stands of Bahamian subspecies of Caribbean pine in the world. Given the unique species that inhabit these pine forests, such as the endemic and critically endangered Bahama Oriole, monitoring habitats on Andros is crucial to inform conservation planning. We developed a 2019 land classification map to assess the status of nine terrestrial habitats on Andros. Our Random Forest classification model predicted habitat classes with high overall accuracy. Caribbean pine was the dominant land class making up roughly one-third of the total terrestrial area. Whereas much of the pine forest area was found as small patches, most were close to other patches of pine suggesting isolation of forest patches is low. We compared our known intact forest areas to recent forest loss identified by the Hansen et al. Global Forest Change product and assessed areas of habitat disturbance in high-resolution imagery. Our results suggest that this global map overpredicted forest loss on Andros. The small degree of true forest loss on Andros was driven mostly by anthropogenic activity. A cross-tabulation of the Hansen forest loss with fire data showed that understory fires were frequently associated with falsely classified deforestation. Given the threats of climate change to this open forest type—intensifying fire regimes, strengthening hurricanes, and sea level rise—monitoring changes in open forest extent is a critical task across the Caribbean region and the world.
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Data availability
The data generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
The R code generated during and implemented in the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge help from UMBC undergraduate researchers Jennifer Christhilf, Kayla Puglisi, Emma Kartalia, and Sierra Barkdoll who helped to collect ground-truth data. UMBC students Justin Drew, Aren Warner, and Breanna Byrd assisted with generating the burn date layers used in the fire analysis. We thank our partners Bahamas National Trust, especially Bradley Watson and Giselle Dean, for their assistance in providing local expertise and logistical help. We thank the Rudd family for their generous housing donations. Also, thanks to our funding sources, including Birds Caribbean, the Florida Ornithological Society, and US National Science Foundation IRES funding (OISE-1827110). Finally, we wish to extend a special thank you to the local communities on Andros for all their welcoming support and interest in this research.
Funding
Birds Caribbean, David S. Lee Fund, Florida Ornithological Society, Robertson Fellowship Award, and the National Science Foundation, International Research Experience for Students (IRES) 1827110.
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JMA: performed data collection and conducted all analyses and writing. MEF: principal investigator of the present study and remote sensing expertise. KEO: mentored first author and initiated the present study. MGR: assisted with on-the-ground data collection. SBJ: assisted with on-the-ground data collection. SC-W: assisted with logistics and permits. EHF: assisted with on-the-ground data collection.
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Antalffy, J.M., Rowley, M.G., Johnson, S.B. et al. Comparing global and local maps of the Caribbean pine forests of Andros, home of the critically endangered Bahama Oriole. Environ Monit Assess 193, 817 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-021-09560-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-021-09560-7