The forest canopy plays a crucial role in the maintenance of biodiversity and the provision of local and global ecosystem services. Forest canopies support about 40% of species on land. Forest canopies also influence the hydrology of more than 45 million ha of land by controlling evapotranspiration and intercepting up to 25% of precipitation, and their removal often decreases local rainfall substantially.
 
Work at this challenging frontier only began in earnest in the early 1980s and has already changed substantially our understanding of key ecosystem processes. To further this effort, the Global Canopy Programme supports basic scientific research into canopy biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, such as the Canopy Cats project and the IBISCA project.
 
In collaboration with our partners, we are also leading efforts to demonstrate the immense value of regional to global forest ecosystem services, such as the rainfall service provided by Amazonia. By sharing this information with decision-makers, we aim to scientifically underpin the development of large-scale payments for these ecosystem services.
 
Forest Ecosystem Services

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ecosystem services are the “benefits that people obtain from ecosystems”. Forests are like giant utilities providing ecosystem services to the world that we all benefit from but we don’t pay for. Apart from carbon storage and sequestration, they include water storage, rainfall generation, climate buffering, biodiversity, soil stabilisation and more.

These services are likely to be worth billions of dollars per year, but need to be valued more accurately. They may not yet be accounted for in markets but their loss would have massive economic impacts, threatening food security, energy security and environmental security at local to global scales. If current policies continue, by 2050 the global loss of forests would reduce the world’s economy by about 6 per cent.

 

Shematic based upon: Roy Haines-Young, presented by J-L Weber, the Global Loss of Biological Diversity, 5-6 March 2008, Brussels

 

Our actions (symbolised by the red arrow in the schematic above) can have positive and negative impacts on forest biodiversity and resulting ecosystem services. So there is an urgent need to carry out research into the links between tropical forest biodiversity, ecosystems, well-being and human impacts.