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Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong
The current unprecedented expansion of infrastructure promises to enhance human wellbeing but risks causing substantial harm to natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide for people. A framework for systematically and proactively identifying the likely benefits and costs of such developments i...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5169357/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27977663 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266 |
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author | Balmford, Andrew Chen, Huafang Phalan, Ben Wang, Mingcheng O’Connell, Christine Tayleur, Cath Xu, Jianchu |
author_facet | Balmford, Andrew Chen, Huafang Phalan, Ben Wang, Mingcheng O’Connell, Christine Tayleur, Cath Xu, Jianchu |
author_sort | Balmford, Andrew |
collection | PubMed |
description | The current unprecedented expansion of infrastructure promises to enhance human wellbeing but risks causing substantial harm to natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide for people. A framework for systematically and proactively identifying the likely benefits and costs of such developments is badly needed. Here, we develop and test at the subregional scale a recently proposed global scheme for comparing the potential gains from new roads for food production with their likely impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Working in the Greater Mekong—an exceptionally biodiverse subregion undergoing rapid development—we combined maps of isolation from urban centres, yield gaps, and the current area under 17 crops to estimate where and how far road development could in principle help to increase food production without the need for cropland expansion. We overlaid this information with maps summarising the importance of remaining habitats to terrestrial vertebrates and (as examples of major ecosystem services) to global and local climate regulation. This intersection revealed several largely converted yet relatively low-yielding areas (such as central, eastern, and northeastern Thailand and the Ayeyarwady Delta), where narrowing yield gaps by improving transport links has the potential to substantially increase food production at relatively limited environmental cost. Concentrating new roads and road improvements here while taking strong measures to prevent their spread into areas which are still extensively forested (such as northern Laos, western Yunnan, and southwestern Cambodia) could thus enhance rural livelihoods and regional food production while helping safeguard vital ecosystem services and globally significant biological diversity. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5169357 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-51693572016-12-28 Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong Balmford, Andrew Chen, Huafang Phalan, Ben Wang, Mingcheng O’Connell, Christine Tayleur, Cath Xu, Jianchu PLoS Biol Research Article The current unprecedented expansion of infrastructure promises to enhance human wellbeing but risks causing substantial harm to natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide for people. A framework for systematically and proactively identifying the likely benefits and costs of such developments is badly needed. Here, we develop and test at the subregional scale a recently proposed global scheme for comparing the potential gains from new roads for food production with their likely impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Working in the Greater Mekong—an exceptionally biodiverse subregion undergoing rapid development—we combined maps of isolation from urban centres, yield gaps, and the current area under 17 crops to estimate where and how far road development could in principle help to increase food production without the need for cropland expansion. We overlaid this information with maps summarising the importance of remaining habitats to terrestrial vertebrates and (as examples of major ecosystem services) to global and local climate regulation. This intersection revealed several largely converted yet relatively low-yielding areas (such as central, eastern, and northeastern Thailand and the Ayeyarwady Delta), where narrowing yield gaps by improving transport links has the potential to substantially increase food production at relatively limited environmental cost. Concentrating new roads and road improvements here while taking strong measures to prevent their spread into areas which are still extensively forested (such as northern Laos, western Yunnan, and southwestern Cambodia) could thus enhance rural livelihoods and regional food production while helping safeguard vital ecosystem services and globally significant biological diversity. Public Library of Science 2016-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5169357/ /pubmed/27977663 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266 Text en © 2016 Balmford et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Balmford, Andrew Chen, Huafang Phalan, Ben Wang, Mingcheng O’Connell, Christine Tayleur, Cath Xu, Jianchu Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong |
title | Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong |
title_full | Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong |
title_fullStr | Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong |
title_full_unstemmed | Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong |
title_short | Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong |
title_sort | getting road expansion on the right track: a framework for smart infrastructure planning in the mekong |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5169357/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27977663 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266 |
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