Qualla: Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area

Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1979, a young ecologist named Thomas Lovejoy made an audacious deal with the Brazilian government. If ranchers were going to clear the rainforest for cattle pastures anyway, he asked, would they allow him to choose which patches they left standing? He would map out isolated squares of forest of precise sizes: one hectare, ten hectares, one hundred hectares. He would count every living thing inside them before the cutting began, and again afterward, for as long as anyone would let him. The government agreed. Over four decades later, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project is still running on 3,288 hectares north of Manaus, and the data from it has rewritten textbooks on extinction, isolation and what happens when rainforest gets chopped into islands.

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area: A Landscape Designed for Measurement

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The research area lies mostly within the municipality of Rio Preto da Eva, with a smaller slice in Manaus itself, beginning about 80 kilometers north of the city. The BR-174 highway, which leads from Manaus toward Boa Vista and eventually Venezuela, divides the site in two. Most ...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area: The Question That Would Not Let Go

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The experiment asks what happens to biodiversity when continuous forest is fragmented. The answer, it turns out, is complicated and unhappy. Small fragments lose species faster than anyone expected. A one-hectare island loses its canopy birds, its primates, its large predators wi...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area: Created by Decree, Managed by Science

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area of Relevant Ecological Interest, known by its Portuguese acronym ARIE-PDBFF, was formalized by federal decree 91.884 on November 5, 1985, six years after the research began. Under Brazilian conservation law, an Area of Rele...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project Area: What the Forest Still Holds

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The average elevation is 80 meters, on plateaus cut by small streams and creeks that flood seasonally. The climate is hot and wet, the Koppen classification Afi, with average temperatures around 26 degrees Celsius and annual rainfall near 1,900 millimeters. Rainy season runs Dece...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0