Abstract booklet - gtö – Society for Tropical Ecology

170PARALLEL SESSION HALL H IV THURSDAY LINK FOR SURVIVALECONOMIC INCENTIVES FOR MITIGATING FRAGMENTATION ANDEDGE-EFFECTS IN THE BRAZILIAN ATLANTIC FORESTFlorian Hartig 1 , Sandro Pütz 1 , Cristina Banks-Leite 2 , Andreas Huth 1 ,Martin Drechsler 11UFZ Leipzig, Leipzig, DE, florian.hartig@ufz.de, 2 University of São Paulo, SãoPaulo, BRHabitat loss and fragmentation are the main causes of biodiversity loss in theMata Atlântica region. Rainforest is still being lost at an alarming rate, but thereis hope that forest protection laws and carbon sequestration initiatives suchas REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) will createincentives for preservation and reforestation in the future.Practically all of these initiatives express their targets in terms of forest areawithin a larger region. However, area-based policies alone bear the danger ofcreating forest patches that are too small and too isolated to support importantecosystem functions.In our contribution, we discuss how international forest protection initiativessuch as REDD and national forest protection laws could be altered to considernot only total area, but also size and connectivity of forest fragments. Weshow evidence from theoretical and empirical studies that have examined theapplicability of such structural incentives for conservation policy. We argue thatthe implementation of incentives that consider the spatial distribution of foreston a regional scale, together with prioritization of biodiversity hotspots onlarger spatial scales, will maximize cobenefits between carbon sequestration,conservation, and other ecosystem services that arise from preserving theAtlantic Forest.THURSDAY 17:30 Hall H IVgtöSociety for Tropical Ecology | Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie e.V.