Testing the effectiveness of the Forest Integrity Assessment: A field-based tool for estimating the condition of tropical forest

1. Global targets to halt biodiversity losses and mitigate climate change
will require protecting rainforest beyond current protected area networks,
necessitating responsible forest stewardship from a diverse range of
companies, communities and private individuals. Robust assessments of
forest condition are critical for successful forest management, but many
existing techniques are highly technical, time-consuming, expensive, or
require specialist knowledge. 2. To make assessment of tropical forests
accessible to a wide range of actors, many of whom may be limited by
resources or expertise, the High Conservation Value Resource Network
(HCVRN), with the SE Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP),
developed a South East Asian version of the Forest Integrity Assessment
(FIA) tool as a rapid (< 1 hour) method of assessing forest
condition in the field, where non-experts respond to 50 questions about
characteristics of the local environment while walking a site transect.
Here, we examined the effectiveness of this survey tool by conducting ~
1,000 assessments of forest condition at 16 tropical rainforest sites with
varying levels of disturbance in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. 3. We found good
agreement (R-squared range: 0.50 – 0.78) between FIA survey scores and
independent measures of forest condition, including biodiversity,
vegetation structure, aboveground carbon, and other key metrics of
ecosystem function, indicating that the tool performed well. Although
there was variation among assessor responses when surveying the same
forest sites, assessors were consistent in their ranking of those sites,
and prior forest knowledge had a minimal effect on the FIA scores.
Revisions or further training for questions where assessors disagree, for
example on the presence of fauna at a site, could improve consistency. 4.
We conclude that the FIA survey tool is a robust method of assessing
forest condition, providing a rapid and accessible means of forest
conservation assessment. The FIA tool could be incorporated into
management practices in a wide range of forest conservation schemes, from
sustainability standards, to community forestry and restoration
initiatives. The tool will enable more organisations and individuals to
understand the conservation value of the forests they manage, and to
identify areas for targeted improvements.Minhyuk Seo