@article{b2a25865913347158717bcfb677636dd,
title = "Opportunities for biodiversity gains under the world's largest reforestation programme",
abstract = "Reforestation is a critical means of addressing the environmental and social problems of deforestation. China's Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) is the world's largest reforestation scheme. Here we provide the first nationwide assessment of the tree composition of GFGP forests and the first combined ecological and economic study aimed at understanding GFGP's biodiversity implications. Across China, GFGP forests are overwhelmingly monocultures or compositionally simple mixed forests. Focusing on birds and bees in Sichuan Province, we find that GFGP reforestation results in modest gains (via mixed forest) and losses (via monocultures) of bird diversity, along with major losses of bee diversity. Moreover, all current modes of GFGP reforestation fall short of restoring biodiversity to levels approximating native forests. However, even within existing modes of reforestation, GFGP can achieve greater biodiversity gains by promoting mixed forests over monocultures; doing so is unlikely to entail major opportunity costs or pose unforeseen economic risks to households.",
author = "Fangyuan Hua and Xiaoyang Wang and Xinlei Zheng and Brendan Fisher and Lin Wang and Jianguo Zhu and Ya Tang and Yu, {Douglas W.} and Wilcove, {David S.}",
note = "Funding Information: We thank Y. Liu, Q. Wei, S.K. Robinson, S. Francis, R. Zeidler, W. Hua, P. Li, M. Xu, Y. Yao, S. Wong and F. Wagner for helpful discussions and logistical support. Special thanks go to our field assistants: J. Wu, S. Huang, M. Tong, K. Du, Q. Chen, X. Yang, L. Zhu, Z. Xie, Y. Yuan, X. Bao, Q. Gu, L. Qin, F. Yu, L. Zhang and T. Zhu. We thank R.M. Dorazio for extremely valuable assistance with data analysis. Funding for this study was provided by the High Meadows Foundation and the 111 Project of China (B08037). D.W.Y. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31400470, 41661144002), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012FY110800), the University of East Anglia, and the State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution at the Kunming Institute of Zoology (GREKF13-13, GREKF14-13, and GREKF16-09). J.Z. and L.W. were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31272327). We thank D.P. Edwards, M. Genung, R. Winfree, T.M. Lee, Z. Burivalova, J.S.H. Lee and J.B. Socolar for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2016.",
year = "2016",
month = sep,
day = "6",
doi = "10.1038/ncomms12717",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "7",
journal = "Nature communications",
issn = "2041-1723",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
}