Action

Retain/create habitat corridors in farmed areas

How is the evidence assessed?
  • Effectiveness
    45%
  • Certainty
    15%
  • Harms
    4%

Study locations

Key messages

  • One study evaluated the effects on peatland vegetation, in habitat patches or within corridors, of retaining or creating habitat corridors in farmed areas.This study was in a tropical peat swamp.
  • Vegetation structure (1 study): One study in Indonesia found that a peat swamp forest corridor contained 5,819 trees/ha. This included 331 large trees/ha, 1,360 saplings/ha and 4,128 seedlings/ha.  
  • Overall plant richness/diversity (1 study): The same study recorded 18–29 tree species in the peat swamp forest corridor (the number of species depending on the size class).

About key messages

Key messages provide a descriptive index to studies we have found that test this intervention.

Studies are not directly comparable or of equal value. When making decisions based on this evidence, you should consider factors such as study size, study design, reported metrics and relevance of the study to your situation, rather than simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation.

Supporting evidence from individual studies

  1. A study in 2007 in a peat swamp forest corridor in Indonesia (Gunawan et al. 2007) reported that the corridor contained 5,819 trees/ha (of all sizes) and 18–29 species (depending on size class). There were 331 large trees/ha, 1,360 saplings/ha and 4,128 seedlings/ha. There were 27 different species of large tree, 18 species of sapling and 29 species of seedling (total number of species not reported). The study does not report comparable data for natural peat swamp forests. The tallest trees were 48 m high. In 2007, one 100 x 100 m plot was established in a forest corridor (100–500 m wide), retained for nature conservation within a red wattle Acacia crassicarpa plantation. The water table was approximately 1 m lower than in natural peat swamp forest. Trees at all life stages were counted, measured and identified: large trees (trunk diameter >10 cm) in the entire plot, saplings (diameter 5–10 cm) in twenty-five 5 x 5 m subplots, and seedlings (diameter <5 cm) in twenty-five 2 x 2 m subplots.

    Study and other actions tested
Please cite as:

Taylor, N.G., Grillas, P. & Sutherland, W.J. (2020) Peatland Conservation. Pages 367-430 in: W.J. Sutherland, L.V. Dicks, S.O. Petrovan & R.K. Smith (eds) What Works in Conservation 2020. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.

Where has this evidence come from?

List of journals searched by synopsis

All the journals searched for all synopses

Peatland Conservation

This Action forms part of the Action Synopsis:

Peatland Conservation
Peatland Conservation

Peatland Conservation - Published 2018

Peatland Conservation

What Works 2021 cover

What Works in Conservation

What Works in Conservation provides expert assessments of the effectiveness of actions, based on summarised evidence, in synopses. Subjects covered so far include amphibians, birds, mammals, forests, peatland and control of freshwater invasive species. More are in progress.

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