Nature Communications (Sep 2016)

Opportunities for biodiversity gains under the world’s largest reforestation programme

  • Fangyuan Hua,
  • Xiaoyang Wang,
  • Xinlei Zheng,
  • Brendan Fisher,
  • Lin Wang,
  • Jianguo Zhu,
  • Ya Tang,
  • Douglas W. Yu,
  • David S. Wilcove

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12717
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

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China’s Grain for Green Program is the world’s largest reforestation program, encompassing tens of millions of hectares since 1999. Here, Hua et al. show that the majority of areas have been reforested with tree monocultures, but that planting mixed forests could increase animal biodiversity without imposing additional economic costs.